Join us for a talk on artist Neo Rauch with Jeff Fleming, Director of the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, and co-organizer of Neo Rauch: Aus dem Boden/ From the Floor. Learn more about the exhibition’s curatorial framework.

Jeff Fleming was appointed director of the Des Moines Art Center in the fall of 2005, where he served as acting director, deputy director, senior curator, and curator since 1999. Previously, he held the position of chief curator of exhibitions at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Fleming holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, and a master of fine arts degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. His numerous exhibition projects have focused on presenting the first one-person museum shows in the United States for younger, international artists. These artists include the American artists Tom Sachs, John Currin, Ellen Gallagher, and Tom Friedman, as well as the British artist Glenn Brown, the German artists Christian Jankowski and Anselm Reyle, and the Chinese artist Yan Pei Ming. Other group exhibition projects have included Magic Markers: Objects of Transformation; Aisle 5; and My Reality: Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation. In 2009, Fleming, in collaboration with the City of Des Moines, created the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park. Located in the heart of downtown, the park includes 29 significant sculptures by 23 internationally-acclaimed artists, such as Yayoi Kusama, Louise Bourgeois, Ai Wei Wei, Olafur Eliasson, Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Keith Haring, Jaume Plensa, and Yoshitomo Nara. Fleming’s initiatives as director of the Art Center has been to open its doors to diverse communities, present thought-provoking contemporary art, upgrade the physical facilities, and place the institution on solid financial ground. Art and Living magazine recently named him one of eleven innovative directors of American museums.