Jan Ernst Adlmann

JAN ERNST ADLMANN, a resident of Santa Fe and a native of Maine, is an art museum director/curator who has long been active in the American Association of Museums, the International Council ofMuseums and the Association of Art Museum Directors. He has curated and organized many exhibitions dedicated to the entire gamut of art forms, from antiquities to contemporary art. In addition, Adlmann has  organized overseas exhibitions,as well as guest lectured for, the United States Information Agency/Arts America in both Europe and South America.

Author of the 1996 publication, Contemporary Art in New Mexico, Adlmann is a well-known and highly regarded art history lecturer in Santa Fe, and continually involved with New Mexico’s artists, museums, collectors and art publications. His most recent artist monographs, on artists Jesus Moroles and Richard Segalman, appeared in 2004. Adlmann is a regular contributor to Santa Fe art publications and newspapers, and a contributor to national art publications such as Art in America, Art News and Museum News.

In the 1980s and early 90s, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, under Director Thomas Krens,  Adlmann served as Assistant Director for External Affairs, handling special events, trustee and collector relations,educational programs, and domestic and overseas travel.

For some years,  Adlmann was the Guggenheim point person for the development of a  Salzburg Guggenheim Museum, designed by Hans Hollein;  the project was eventually superseded by the Guggenheim, Bilbao.  Adlmann also inaugurated at the Guggenheim the first  international  museum travel program, welcoming to New York European museum groups, a program called “Inside Modern Manhattan”.

Adlmann has been director at the Vassar College Art Gallery, the  Long BeachMuseum of Art, the Tampa  Art Center, and the Wichita Art Museum. In addition, he has taught at art history and museum administration at the College of Santa Fe, the University of Colorado, at Hamilton College and Vassar College. 

Adlmann  completed studies in Art History at Berkeley and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, as well as at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin, with his interests focused on 19th and 20th century art.

In 1980, Adlmann conceived and organized America’s first large-scale exposition of “Vienna Moderne: 1898-1914” at the Smithsonian’s  Cooper-Hewitt Museum, an exhibition which traveled throughout the United States. In recognition of his efforts on behalf of Austro-American cultural exchange, Adlmann was awarded a Knight’s Cross honorarydecoration by the Federal Republic of Austria in 1982.

Adlmann has garnered  an enthusiastic following for his annual New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts lecture series; in addition,  he has spent much of the past decade traveling worldwide as a lecturer for such organizations as Classical Cruises, Lindblad/Special Expeditions, Gohagan and Coda Tours, lecturing on art and architecture for premier art museum membership groups, and members of  the Archives of American Art,  the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and various alumni associations.


In 2003 and 2005, Adlmann has had two solo exhibitions of his assemblage sculpture, at the LewAllen and Fred Kline Galleries, Santa Fe. For the biennial Santa Fe International Art Fair, Adlmann has served as curator on two occasions in recent years.



A PARTIAL LIST OF OVERSEAS LECTURE  ACTIVITIES 

(Arrangements Abroad)   Central Europe
Po River Cruise,Florence/Venice 2001
(aboard River Cloud II  )  


National Trust Groups          
Istanbul, Black Sea, Asia Minor, Aegean
(Gohagan Company)       
(lecturing on Islamic,Byzantine,Greco-Roman)

same           
French Waterways
(lectures on Impressionism and Modernism)

same                   
Waterways of Belgium & Holland
(lectures on Northern Renaissance art and
architecture,  Vermeer, et alia)

same     
Sea Cloud  cruises
(lectures on Classical art/architecture, Greek isles, Sicily, Malta, et alia)    

same   
Rhine,St.Moritz, Villa d’Este
(lectures on Gothic,Renaissance,Leonardo)

same                                                     Danube Cruises
(lectures on the Baroque, Vienna Secession)



Special Expeditions   
Inaugural Cruise Caledonian Star
Red Sea, Jordan, Egypt, Asia Minor,Greece,

Malta, Sicily, Western Mediterranean

(lectures on Egyptian, Byzantine, and Classical art)

same   
Portugal, Spain and the Balearics
(lectures on Hispanic and Moorish art)

Travel Dynamics   
Modern Art Cruise, Mediterranean and
Venice Biennale Opening
(lectures on 20th century art/architecture) 

Guggenheim Museum             
Modern Art : Germany & Spain

Dokumentation