This just in.

Gary Garrels, after stints at MOMA and Hammer, returns to SFMOMA.

From the press release: "Gary Garrels will join the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) as the new Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra announced today. Recognized internationally for his acclaimed exhibitions and expertise in modern and contemporary art, Garrels is currently chief curator and deputy director of exhibitions and public programs at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. He succeeds Madeleine Grynsztejn, who was senior curator at SFMOMA from 2000 until her departure in March 2008 to become director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago. The senior curator’s chair in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA is named for the late Elise S. Haas, a distinguished San Francisco collector and dedicated Museum trustee whose family foundation endowed the position. Garrels will assume his new position at SFMOMA in September of 2008.

Neal Benezra said today, “The museum is delighted to welcome back this tremendous scholar and visionary to our curatorial team. Gary’s extraordinary credentials and knowledge of post-1960s contemporary art—the continuing focus of SFMOMA’s acquisitions program—will only strengthen our momentum in adding the highest quality of art to our holdings. His passion for emerging artists and capacity for new thinking will bring important art to a wider audience and extend the museum’s record of innovative exhibitions. I am proud that Gary, who made such a deep impact here from 1993 to 2000, will return after eight years of brilliant accomplishment as a curator, author, and lecturer for the country’s most highly regarded institutions.”

Among Garrels’s exhibitions during his previous tenure at SFMOMA as Elise S. Haas Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture (1993 to 2000), are Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective (2000); Celebrating Modern Art: The Anderson Collection (2000); Jasper Johns: New Paintings and Works on Paper (1999); Roy Lichtenstein: A Tribute (1999); Robert Rauschenberg (1999); Inside Out: New Chinese Art (1999); and Willem de Kooning: The Late Paintings, the 1980s (1995), with the Walker Art Center.