MFA could use modern art curator

Michael Taylor, one of the country’s most respected curators of modern art, is moving from the Philadelphia Art Museum to become director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

An expert in Dada and Surrealism, Taylor has organized a wide array of ambitious shows at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he began working in 1997. Since 2004 he has served as curator of modern art and department head of modern and contemporary art, and has overseen a substantial number of important acquisitions by the likes of Guston, Gorky, Johns, Kelly, and Kentridge.

Taylor will replace Brian Kennedy, the Irishman who was appointed director of the Toledo Museum of Art late last year. Taylor’s 2009 book, “Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés,’’ won the George Wittenborn Prize for outstanding scholarship in the field of art history, and was awarded first prize for best museum permanent collection catalog by the American Association of Art Museum Curators.