‘Radical Seafaring’ Curator Jumps Ship for Guild Hall

After months of silence and speculation, Guild Hall announced last Thursday that Andrea Grover has been named executive director to replace Ruth Appelhof, who is retiring.

Ms. Grover will begin her appointment on Sept. 1. She has been a curator of special projects at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill since 2011. Her most recent curatorial project, “Radical Seafaring,” has been well received by critics and audiences and has defined a new category of contemporary art, “offshore art.”

She said last week that she was delighted by the appointment, and by the multidisciplinary mission of Guild Hall’s programming. “The name ‘Guild Hall’ means gathering place and lends itself to the cross-pollination of the arts and other branches of knowledge, a home for the meeting of minds,” she said.

Known for her successful efforts to build communities within East End art circles, as well as in Houston, where she was founder and director of the Aurora Picture Show, she has also served as an adviser for arts foundations such as Creative Capital, the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts.

She said her appointment will bring new opportunities to work together with the Parrish Art Museum “to make the East End creative community even greater.”

Ms. Grover has been a Warhol curatorial fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a Center for Curatorial Leadership fellow at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Ms. Appelhof announced her retirement last year. She will stay in the area to work on several book projects.