QUICK TAKES - Aug. 14, 2009

In a move intended to increase public access to its works on paper, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has hired a curator to head two departments: photography and prints and drawings.

Britt Salvesen, director and chief curator of the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, will assume the new position in mid-October.

A historian of modern art and photography, Salvesen will succeed prints and drawings curator Kevin Salatino, who is leaving LACMA to direct the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine, and photography curator Charlotte Cotton, who is heading to England to become creative director of the Bradford-based National Media Museum’s planned expansion in London.

But LACMA does not plan to merge the two departments or consolidate their collections. The immediate goal is to build storage and classroom space that will make the artworks available to a broader audience. The museum also plans to hire a curatorial specialist in Old Master prints and drawings.

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Suzanne Muchnic