William Stover is leaving MFA

William Stover, assistant curator of contemporary art at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, is leaving the museum in the wake of the institution naming Boston Institute of Contemporary Art curator Jen Mergel as its new curator of contemporary art on Dec. 22.

Word on the street is that Stover resigned at the very end of December, and it’s unclear where he might be headed. Stover did not respond to several attempts to contact him over the past couple weeks. An MFA spokesperson writes, “We cannot discuss personnel matters as part of our human resource policy.”

Stover joined the MFA around 2002, coming from New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art, where he had been a curatorial administrator and publications manager. Like other contemporary curators at the museum, his early shows here evidenced curatorial ambition and wit – like his exhibition of Cerith Wyn Evans’s blinking chandeliers in 2004 – but more recent shows seemed to reflect a diminished sense of what could be accomplished (should I say “tolerated”?) inside the MFA bureaucracy.

Previously
Jan. 8, 2010: More on Mergel going to MFA.
Dec. 22, 2009: Mergel leaving ICA for MFA.
Dec. 22, 2009: Mergel departure leaves ICA with one curator.
July 30, 2009: Baume leaving ICA.
Dec. 5, 2008: Brutvan hired by Norton Museum.
July 11, 2008: Brutvan leaving MFA.
Sept. 15, 2007: Saywell named MFA's contemporary art czar. And MFA confirms appointment of Saywell as director of west wing.