Phillips Collection names director

A curator and administrator at the Dallas Museum of Art has been named director of the Phillips Collection in Washington, a modern art facility that has doubled in size in recent years.

Dorothy Kosinski, a specialist in 19th and 20th century art, will become the third person outside the Phillips family to lead the museum. She is to assume the director role in the spring, the museum said, succeeding Jay Gates, who is leaving in 2008 after more than nine years as director.

Phillips board Chairman George Vradenburg said Kosinski, 54, was selected in part because of her knowledge of the museum’s history and founder, Duncan Phillips. Phillips opened the museum to the public in 1921 in a family mansion near Dupont Circle. It includes works by Renoir, Van Gogh, Degas, Matisse, Cezanne, Picasso, Monet, O’Keeffe, Rothko and Lawrence.