Jonathan P. Binstock
Jonathan P. Binstock is an American art historian, curator and museum administrator, and the director of The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., since 2023. He previously served as director of the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York, and as a curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He also worked for Citibank's art finance and advisory division for several years as an art adviser. His primary curatorial and research focus is modern and contemporary art.
Early life and education
Binstock was born in New York, and raised on Long Island.He received a bachelor's degree in art history and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. He completed his master's degree and Ph.D. in art history at the University of Michigan. His doctoral dissertation explored the career of artist Sam Gilliam, and Binstock visited Gilliam several times as part of his research. He received a Smithsonian [American Art Museum] fellowship to support his research in 1996. He taught at the University of Michigan while earning his graduate degrees.
Career
Early curatorial career
Binstock served as assistant curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the late 1990s, where he organized a major exhibition on Andy Warhol. He also taught at the University of Pennsylvania. He was soon hired by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as curator of contemporary art, starting in 2000. He later told Artnet News that he had been hired on the condition that he begin organizing a retrospective exhibition for artist Sam Gilliam, which he curated in 2005.Other exhibitions organized by Binstock during this period included two solo project-scale exhibitions by artist Jeremy Blake.