The District lost a significant curatorial voice at the turn of the year. In an email yesterday, Paul Roth announced that he left the Corcoran Gallery of Art on December 31, 2009, to take a position as the Executive Director of The Richard Avedon Foundation in New York. This news follows about a year after the extraordinary Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power exhibit closed at the Corc, a show that examined a tight body of Avedon’s work and showed the Corcoran at its best.

In his email, Roth had some parting words about the Corcoran: “All through my time there, the Corcoran’s Board and directors gave the curators great freedom to organize exhibitions that are among the best anywhere. It goes without saying that photography remains a strong feature of the institution’s planning for the future.”

It also goes without saying that the institution has lost one of its most significant voices. As Roth explains, the Corcoran remains dedicated to showing strong photography exhibitions — chief curator Philip Brookman is finishing a retrospective of the pioneering English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, opening in 2010, while assistant curator Amanda Maddox has stepped forward to lead the photography collection and programming.