Carleton is pleased to announce the hiring of Jeff Rathermel as Carleton’s new Director and Curator of the Lawrence ’60 and Linda Perlman Teaching Museum.
Jeff has worked for Minnesota Center for Book Arts in Minneapolis as artistic director since 2004, and added executive director duties in 2010. He’s served at numerous institutions in higher education as a visiting or adjunct faculty member, including as a visiting assistant professor at Carleton from 2003-09, teaching classes in book arts and papermaking.
A 1987 graduate of University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point with a BS in sociology and public administration, Jeff also holds a MA from the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota in public affairs and non-profit management, as well as a BFA and MFA from the University of Minnesota in printmaking and book arts.
Jeff’s experience and personality are a great fit for the Perlman Teaching Museum—like the rest of the Weitz Center for Creativity, the teaching museum is a laboratory for exploring the mind-expanding possibilities of art as an essential part of education. Jeff’s wide-ranging intellectual curiosity and inventive approach to exhibition creation are ideal qualities to lead the Museum into the future.
He continues to work as a practicing artist. His artistic style is characterized by handwork, layered imagery, hybrid print techniques, and the inclusion of tactile elements. As a printmaker, hand papermaker, and book artist, Jeff combines multiple disciplines in his work in order to explore two- and three-dimensional formats, the written word, mark-making, repetition, rhythm, symbolism, and the power of visual narratives. Recent work includes explorations of the psychological research of Hermann Rorschach and reinterpretations of the unfinished poems of Constantine Cavafy.
Jeff succeeds Laurel Bradley, who is retiring after serving as museum director since 1996, and oversaw the transition to the new museum space in the Weitz Center for Creativity in 2011. Laurel was instrumental in the development of Carleton’s Mellon Foundation Grant, “Visualizing the Liberal Arts.”