Getty Museum’s senior antiquities curator leaving for Corning Museum of Glass

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Karol Wight, the Getty Museum’s senior curator for antiquities, is leaving the organization to become the executive director of the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. Wight will assume her new post Aug. 15, according to the Corning.

A spokeswoman for the Corning said Wight has been in conversations ‘for several months’ about taking on the directorship.

Wight was named the Getty’s antiquities curator in 2007. She succeeded Marion True, whose job she had held on an acting basis since True’s controversial resignation in 2005 amid charges the Getty bought looted antiquities. Wight joined the Getty in 1985 as a graduate-student intern and was made a curator in 1992. Her specialty is in glass from the Roman empire, and she co-wrote ‘Looking at Glass,’ published by the Getty in 2005.

At the Corning Museum, Wight, 52, will succeed David Whitehouse, executive director since 1999. She will oversee the museum’s 45,000-object collection as well as its studio, library, programming and publications.

Wight’s resignation from the Getty comes on the heels of the appointment of James Cuno as the head of the Getty Trust. Cuno, who comes from the Art Institute of Chicago, will assume his post Aug. 1.

Wight ascended to the top antiquities position at the Getty at a time of great controversy at the institution. True had resigned under a cloud, having been charged with having conspired to obtain illegally excavated works of art.

Since then, the Getty has worked to repatriate the works of art in question. The museum recently returned its statue of Aphrodite, unveiled this month at its new home in Sicily.

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— David Ng

Photo (top): Karol Wight, with David Bomford. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times.

Photo (bottom): Getty Villa. Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images.