Nora Halpern

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Nora R. Halpern (born December 5, 1960) is an American art curator, advisor, historian, museum director, and arts policy professional.

Career

Nora Ruth Halpern was born and raised in New York, New York. Halpern began her career in Los Angeles in 1983 as the Frederick R. Weisman Collections curator. Through 1991, she worked alongside industrialist Frederick Weisman to grow and refine his art collections as well as establish the strategic plan, organizational mission, and working infrastructure of his eponymous art foundation to provide major works of arts to communities that otherwise would not have ready access. Halpern organized more than 50 national and international exhibitions for the Foundation collection, including the first major contemporary art exhibitions to travel to the states of Alaska and Hawaii. She also created educational programming, produced publications and organized roundtable programs including “Support for the Arts in Unsupportive Times”; “Art + Architecture”; “Art + Architecture + Society”; “Conservation and Contemporary Art”; and “Art Fairs."

In 1992, Halpern became the founding director of the museum on the campus of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, which was named the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, the following year. Exhibitions include "Dynaton Before and Beyond"; "A Hollywood Star: Costumes and Drawings of Edith Head"; "Portraits from the Man Ray Trust"; "Arte Poetica: Contemporary Art from Italy"; "Conversations on the Rim: Joe Goode and Tomoharu Murakami"; "Target: Red Grooms!", "Head, Heart, Hand: Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters", and "Agnes Pelton: Poet of Nature", among others.

Halpern has served as vice president at Americans for the Arts since 2001, where she has focused on arts policy convenings and engaging individual thought leaders to advance the arts and arts education across America. She oversees and curates the content, participants, and presenters for the annual National Arts Policy Roundtable programs, which included those held in partnership with Robert Redford and the Sundance Institute, the Aspen Institute, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, and other regional partners.

Past Roundtables include: "The Arts and Civic Engagement; Arts and Healing: Mind, Body and Community"; "The Arts & the Military: A Strategic Partnership"; "The Third Space: Advancing the Arts in a Bi-Partisan Nation"; "The Role of the Arts in a Shifting Economy"; "At the Edge of the Future: The Arts and Technology in the 21st Century"; "The Arts in a Time of Change: Building the 21st Century Case for Philanthropy and Investment in Arts & Culture"; "The Arts and Tourism: Transforming America’s Communities"; "Putting Creative Workers to Work: Reimagining Our Nation’s Creative Workforce"; "The Role of the Arts in Strengthening and Inspiring the 21st Century Global Community"; "Innovating for Impact: Arts-Based Solutions for a Stronger America"; "Negotiating the New: Public and Private Sector Support in Changing Times"; and "Taking History Forward: The Arts as a Door to Dialogue and Change", among others.

Among Halpern’s many publications is the recent "Putting the Arts to Work: 15 Years of National Arts Policy Roundtables, 2006-2020".

On April 13, 2023, President Joe Biden announced his intent to appoint Halpern to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH).

Curatorial Work

In 2005, Halpern co-founded Street Scenes: Projects for DC, a public art program that provides art experiences for the broadest possible public within the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area by placing art experiences outside of the context of the city’s cultural institutions. Street Scenes aims to upend traditional notions of art presentation, creating a more democratic sharing of world class artists and artwork for the nation’s capital in the form of innovative and challenging art experiences in multiple disciplines.

As an independent curator and advisor, Halpern has organized and supported numerous projects, exhibitions, and public programs, including co-curator of "A More Perfect Union: American Artists And the Currents of Our Time," commissioned by the US Department of State Art in Embassies Program as part of their 60th Anniversary celebration in 2023; co-organizer alongside a collective of artists and curators of Artists Band Together, an artists project sold through eBay for Charity, which raised funds to build political power in local communities and expand voter turnout for the 2020 United States elections; Curatorial Consultant for the Asia Society presentation at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts of COAL + ICE and panel moderator for COAL + ICE "Artists of Conscience"presentation at The Phillips Collection; Curator of the critically acclaimed, 2009 large-scale retrospective exhibition of Yoko Ono, titled "Anton’s Memory", at the Bevilacqua la Masa Foundation in Venice, Italy; selection team member alongside Michael Asher, John Baldessari, Steve Durland (former editor of High Performance Magazine), Frans von Rossum, and Tom Rhoads for "Art in the Raw"; curator of "FAUXtography"; and curator of "[(“ ‘ ‘ “)]: Frames of Reference", the first public exhibition where “appropriation artists” were shown within a museum context.

Editorial Work

In addition to her Street Scenes and Americans for the Arts editorial work, Halpern authored “A Dream You Dream Together,” a catalogue essay for "WAR IS OVER! (IF YOU WANT IT): YOKO ONO"; an oral history interview with arts patron Olga Hirshhorn for the Smithsonian Institution; an exhibition essay “Found Sound” for a Washington, DC public art project; articles for Southland magazine including “David Hockney: The Residential Tourist” and “International Impact”; and essays in “Joe Goode” for the James Corcoran Gallery, among many others.

Halpern has authored, among other articles, "Sarah Seeger,” “Charles Ray,” “Jorge Pardo,” “Jaime Baer,” and "Steve Prina,” for Flash Art; “Wolfgang Laib” and “Kady Hoffman and Roy Dowell” for Artcoast; “Changing Tides: Report from Los Angeles” for Balcon; and “Matt Mullican” for Art Issues.

Halpern edited and contributed to Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Collection, “A Los Angeles Collector with an International Eye,” Frederick R. Weisman Foundation of Art, Volumes One and Two, and The Frederick R. Weisman Collection of Art. She contributed to “California In-Roads,” a catalogue essay for exhibition curated in collaboration with the American Center in Paris, and prepared “California Art” for the California State Senate Offices in Washington, DC.

Board Appointments

In addition to Halpern’s appointment to the PCAH, she has served on the Cultural Diplomacy Leadership Council of Meridian International Center since 2021, as well as the Canales Project Advisory Board since 2017. She served on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Arts from 2021 to 2022, and on the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers board from 2014 to 2019.

Halpern worked with women’s arts leadership organization ArtTable for many years, serving on their board from 2000 to 2004, as national chair for advocacy from 2004 to 2006, and as board member-at-large from 2009 to 2012. During this time, Halpern assumed a board position at youth equity and arts education nonprofit P.S. ARTS, serving on its board from 2006 to 2010, and its Leadership Council from 2010 to 2018.

During her time with the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Halpern was an advisory board member from 1996 up until she joined Americans for the Arts in 2001. Her other board positions in the Los Angeles area include the Santa Monica Museum of Art board member from 1994 to 1997; Coalition for Freedom of Expression founding board member in 1989; and Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA) board member from 1983 to 1987.

Civic Honors

Halpern served as a member of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission from 1976 to 1978. In 1976, Halpern was awarded the Mayor’s Award of Merit by Mayor Tom Bradley, for outstanding volunteer service in the advancement of human relations in the Los Angeles community.

Education

Halpern earned her Bachelor of Arts in Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1983, and was a University of California finalist for Rhodes Scholarship the same year. During her undergraduate education, she was awarded the Helena Rubinstein Fellowship in Curatorial Studies from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. Halpern earned her Master of Arts in history from UCLA in 1990.

Personal Life

Halpern is the daughter of Ben Halpern and Lois Julie (Gordon) Halpern and the sister of experimental filmmaker, Amy Halpern. She is the wife of museum director and curator, Kerry Brougher. They have two daughters.

References

This article "Nora Halpern" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Nora Halpern. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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