ART

New York’s Museum of Modern Art named Kirk Varnedoe, a professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Art, as director of its department of painting and sculpture on Wednesday. Varnedoe, 42, will succeed William S. Rubin, who will become a director emeritus of the department in August, after 22 years at the museum. The department is the largest of the museum’s six curatorial departments and is considered the most influential because of the museum’s vast collection of 20th-Century art and the institution’s leading position in the art world.