As of July 1, Raphaela Platow will be leaving Brandeis' Rose Art Museum for Cincinnati's Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (CAC).As chief curator of the Rose, Raphaela has spearheaded many of the museum's more notable exhibitions including 2005's highly succesful "DreamingNow" show; the spring/summer 2006 exhibition, "I Love My Time, I Don't Like My Time: Recent Work by Erwin Wurm," and this semester's highly acclaimed opening of the John Armleder exhibit, "Too Much Is Not Enough." Ms. Platow joined the Rose Art Museum in August 2002 as a curator and moved quickly up the ladder, advancing to Acting Director of the Museum and Chief Curator in about three years. The 34 year old Platow has accomplished much in her short career after graduating with a master of arts in art history and business administration from Humboldt University in Berlin. She has worked at various venues within her native Germany and was a staff member at the 1999 Venice Biennale for the German Pavilion before she came to the United States to fill the position of International Curator for the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, N.C.

Platow's appointment to her new position at the CAC came after eight months of rigorous application readings and numerous interviews. Though she is young, it is anticipated that Raphaela will breathe new life into the troubled institution, which has lost two directors, two senior curators and many other staffers since 2003. According to Richard H. Rosenthal, the chair of the search committee for the position, "Raphaela has demonstrated a gift for recognizing emerging artists. She is an extraordinarily qualified candidate and has the vision to fill the CAC with compelling, challenging and culturally relevant art."

Her most recent curatorial effort, the solo exhibition "Too Much Is Not Enough," received outstanding accolades. The Rose's current show marks Armleder's solo debut in the United States as his diverse works from art, design and pop culture bring to America the inspiration and styles of the Ecart group, a Swiss art movement co-founded by Armleder. The show contains a variety of media including large vibrant sculptures, furniture pieces and installation type works all combined with video and music. The exhibition which seemed to focus on "art for art's sake" received glowing reviews. The Boston Globe reported that "the show has a winningly exuberant, generous, good-humored spirit. For all its anti-art skepticism, it is aesthetically and imaginatively exhilarating, like real art. Too much, in this case, is just about right."

In addition to curatorial duties, Platow also worked closely with the museum's large student staff, which includes three graduating interns. Her departure marks the third this year for the Rose's seven-person permanent staff, preceded by the director of education and the membership coordinator. Platow stated in an interview with Citybeat.com that the university art setting is dear to her but she is "excited about the incredible opportunity to newly envision and define what a center of contemporary art can be in a city that has avidly supported innovative and provocative contemporary expression for almost 70 years." Whether or not this spells trouble for the Rose has yet to be decided upon, but according to a report published by Brandeis, attendance at the Fall 2005 opening of "Fred Tomaselli: Monsters of Paradise" and "'Post' and After: Contemporary Art from the Brandeis Collection," marked the highest attendance rate at a Rose opening.

As an Art History major here at Brandeis, I can say with ernest that Raphaela Platow's influence has had wide-reaching effects for the Fine Arts department. Throughout the past three years that I have spent at this institution, the Rose's exhibitions have been exhilarating, thought-provoking, and avant-garde. Whether it was Marina Abramovic's surrealist installation, "Dream Bed," from the 2005 "DreamingNow" exhibit or the kitschy and witty Fat House from "I Love My Time, I Don't Like My Time: Recent Work by Erwin Wurm," Platow has brought an international eye and novel insight to curatorial work when crafting shows at the Rose. She will be deeply missed at Brandeis.