According to a release from JHU’s Bloomberg Center, curator and gallerist Caitlin Berry has been appointed the inaugural director of the new Irene and Richard Frary Gallery scheduled to open in October at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Ave.
Berry will curate and promote the new art gallery’s rotating series of exhibitions exploring the intersection of arts and democracy that will be free and open to the public. Berry begins her role this month in the lead-up to the official opening of the Frary Gallery on Oct. 23, with its first exhibition, Graphic Design of the European Avant-Gardes.
“We are delighted that Caitlin has become the inaugural Director of the Frary Gallery at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center,” says Daniel Weiss, Homewood Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins and president emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “Our vision for the new Frary Gallery is to present an ambitious program of rotating exhibitions as part of a new arts initiative across the University. A talented and highly accomplished leader, Caitlin is the perfect person to direct the gallery at this exciting time.”
Berry brings a depth of experience working with artistic communities across the museum, commercial, and academic sectors in Washington, D.C., and New York City. Before joining Hopkins, she was the inaugural director of the Rubell Museum DC, where she oversaw the launch of the new museum and established it as a hub for community and conversation through cutting-edge programming and partnerships. Her work included “Style Sessions,” a series developed with The Washington Post that featured artists and filmmakers such as Mickalene Thomas, Ava DuVernay, and Christopher Nolan in curated public talks, including one with BmoreArt’s Connect+Collect that featured Cara Ober, Jeffrey Kent, Sylvia Snowden, and Mera Rubell.
“Caitlin brings creativity, passion, and a deep knowledge of the D.C. arts community that we know will help establish the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery and the Hopkins Bloomberg Center as an essential arts and culture destination for everyone on Pennsylvania Avenue,” said Cybele Bjorklund, Executive Director of the Bloomberg Center. “Starting this fall, we will begin offering engaging visual arts exhibitions at the Frary Gallery alongside Peabody Institute performances and other innovative humanities programming that will foster discovery and dialogue across a range of perspectives.”
Before the Rubell Museum DC, Caitlin was director of the Cody Gallery at Marymount University in Arlington, Va., and ran an independent art advisory with international clients. Her experience in commercial art includes Hemphill Artworks, a leading art gallery in D.C. with a focus on local emerging, mid-career, and established artists and the secondary market.
Specializing in the Washington Color School, Mid-Century African American Art, and Contemporary Art, Berry has also held positions at Eykyn Maclean and Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York.
“As someone who believes in using the arts as an access point to have meaningful conversations, I am excited to join a D.C. institution that is dedicated to doing just that,” Berry said. “I look forward to welcoming our neighbors in D.C, Baltimore, and the greater Hopkins community to the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery, to discover and engage with exhibitions and programs at the intersection of arts and democracy. The Gallery’s proximity to incredible institutions on the National Mall also offers unlimited opportunities for the role that the visual arts can play at the heart of our nation’s capital.”
At the Cody Gallery, Berry curated exhibitions including Nekisha Durrett: Magnolia and Dave Eassa: People and Places You Don’t Know How to Know; and co-curated Jennie Lea Knight: Women of Jefferson Place, alongside John Anderson and Meaghan Kent. At Culture House DC, she independently curated Eric Uhlir: Before, After and In Between and Joseph Shetler: Pursuit of Nothing.
A champion of local artists, Berry curated the 2019 and co-curated the 2020 editions of Art Night, an annual exhibition and fundraiser to support the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA). She holds a Post Baccalaureate degree in Gallery Management and a B.A. in Communication and Art History from Wake Forest University.
More about the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery
The 1,000-square-foot Irene and Richard Frary Gallery, designed by Rockwell Group, will present rotating exhibitions drawn from the university’s collections and special exhibitions in partnership with leading museums and collections.
The inaugural exhibition Art and Graphic Design of the European Avant-Gardes will open October 23 and be on view through February 21, 2025, with rare books, prints, photographs, and ephemera from artists who defined some of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century, including Futurism, Dadaism, Suprematism, Constructivism, and Surrealism. The exhibition draws from the rarely seen private collection of art and literature assembled by Irene and Richard Frary and includes many recent gifts from the collection to the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries.
It will feature 75 works from artists including El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Liubov Popova, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and more—many of which have never been on view in North America. The exhibition pairs abstract works across geographic boundaries, linguistic differences, and urban and periphery areas to demonstrate the international exchange of ideas among European avant-garde artists who helped define new visual vocabularies in response to a world transformed by the modern, post-war age.
Arts programming at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center
The Hopkins Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. offers free, public arts programming that provides a platform for creative expression across a broad range of viewpoints, artistic traditions, and disciplines. Programming includes art exhibitions in the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery; music and dance performances from the Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory faculty, students, and guest artists in a 375-seat theater; and literature, film, and other humanities events that bring the arts to contemporary social and policy issues. The Center also has the arts woven into the fabric of its design with four commissioned, permanent, site-specific works integrated into the building’s interior from renowned international artists Sandra Cinto, Sam Gilliam, Shahzia Sikander, and Elias Sime.
About the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center
Located at the doorstep of our nation’s government, the 435,000-sq-ft Hopkins Bloomberg Center educates and trains future civic leaders and serves as a bustling hub of interdisciplinary collaboration and convenings. The space is equipped with flexible, scalable spaces for learning, gathering, and public programming, adaptable classrooms to meet the needs of emerging teaching methods, an enhanced streetscape to welcome in the community, a cutting-edge 375- seat theater, The Irene and Richard Frary Gallery, and spaces for a future restaurant and café.
