ANDOVER, Mass.— Adam Weinberg, director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy since 1999, has been selected as director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and will take up his new post in November.

“Adam Weinberg has been a tremendously capable and creative director of the Addison Gallery, and we are sorry to see him leave Phillips Academy,” said Head of School Barbara Chase. “Fortunately, Adam’s deft leadership, which built on the work of his predecessors, has put the Addison in a strong position regarding its collections, exhibitions, programs and strategic planning. This impressive legacy, as well as the Addison’s extremely competent and dedicated staff, will be a tremendous boon to the next director,” said Chase.

Susan C. Faxon, associate director and curator of the Addison Gallery will serve as interim director during the search to replace Weinberg, who will remain at Andover through September.

During his nearly five-year tenure at the 73-year-old Addison, Weinberg has run a vibrant exhibition program in a teaching museum, building programs that extend the museum’s reach beyond the students of Phillips Academy to area schools and the public. Sitelines: Art on Main, a collaborative project that brought nationally recognized artists to the Addison to work with students on a variety of temporary outdoor artworks in 2002, is the best example of an art-in-education project organized by Weinberg. The project involved students from Andover and Lawrence, Mass., and Phillips Academy.

During Weinberg’s tenure, the Addison also mounted major exhibitions including Academy Hill: The Andover Campus 1778 to the Present; Secret Games: Wendy Ewald Collaborative Works with Children, 1969-1999; Alex Katz: Small Paintings; Trisha Brown: Dance and Art in Dialogue, 1961-2001; Sol LeWitt: Recent Acquisitions; and Miracle in the Scrap Heap: The Sculpture of Richard Stankiewicz.

Weinberg also oversaw the Edward E. Elson Artists-in-Residence program that resulted in exhibitions of works by Anna Gaskell, Jim Hodges, David McGee and Tony
Feher. He was also instrumental in acquisitions of works by artist Sol Lewitt and a significant print collection from the preeminent print workshop Tyler Graphics.

Before becoming director of the Addison Gallery, Weinberg was curator of the permanent collection at the Whitney and artistic and program director at the American Center in Paris, a center for contemporary visual, performing and media arts. Prior to these posts, he was director of education and assistant curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

The Addison Gallery of American Art, established in 1930, has one of the most important collections of American art in the country. Its collection of more than 12,000 objects began with major works by the most prominent American artists of the past – among them Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent. In the ensuing years, aggressive purchasing and generous gifts in all media have added works by such artists as Alexander Calder, Hans Hofmann, Georgia O'Keeffe and Frank Stella, as well as comprehensive photographic holdings representing Walker Evans, Eadweard Muybridge, Berenice Abbott, Robert Frank and Hollis Frampton, among others.

Phillips Academy, also known as Andover, is a coeducational independent high school of 1,080 students, known for its rigorous academics. Located 21 miles north of Boston, the academy was founded in 1778.