Louisiana Contemporary, Presented by The Helis Foundation 2019 Juror: David Breslin

David Breslin is the DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Prior to joining the Whitney, Breslin was the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas. Previously, he was Associate Director, Research and Academic Program and Associate Curator of Contemporary Projects at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. At the Whitney, Breslin has organized the exhibitions Spilling Over: Painting Color in the 1960s and Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900-1960. He also co-organized David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night and An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017.

Breslin has also organized exhibitions such as Raw Color: The Circles of David Smith and Monet | Kelly at the Clark Art Institute and co-curated Make It New: Abstract Painting from the National Gallery of Art, 1950-1975. His exhibition, The Condition of Being Here: The Drawings of Jasper Johns, opened at the Menil Collection in 2018. Breslin is also overseeing the catalogue raisonné of the drawings of Jasper Johns. He has written essays on the work of, among others, Valentin Carron, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jenny Holzer, Cady Noland, Pablo Picasso and Paul Thek. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Amherst College, a master’s in art history from Williams College and a Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University.