May 10, 1999

Sydney Jenkins Appointed Gallery Director At Ramapo College

(Mahwah) -- President Robert A. Scott recently announced the appointment of Sydney O. Jenkins to the position of art gallery director at Ramapo College of New Jersey. The curator of more than 100 exhibitions, Jenkins brings 15 years professional curatorial experience to the new position. He has been directly involved with planning for three large contemporary art center expansion projects. He earned an M.A. in 1996 from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, where he also held a staff position as curator.

His thesis at Bard dealt with the relationship of folk/outsider art to contemporary museology theory, a topic closely related to the focus of Ramapo College’s permanent collection, which is comprised of many works of popular art of the Caribbean. Jenkins also studied at the Institut de Medici in Florence Italy, the College of William and Mary, Virginia Commonwealth University and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Jenkins previously worked as a research assistant to Robert Storr, curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; gallery director at the Nexus Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta; curator at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia; and associate curator at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in New port News, VA.

His exhibitions have been reviewed by the New York Times and the Art in America Guide to Galleries and Museums, among others.