Cecilia Alemani. (Photo courtesy Patrick McMullan Company)

The Friends of the High Line, the group behind the elevated High Line park, which stretches from the Meatpacking District to West Chelsea, has picked independent critic and curator Cecilia Alemani to become the new curator and director of its art initiatives.

Ms. Alemani--who currently serves as a guest curator for Performa, as Artforum notes in its report on her appointment--was previously director of the X Initiative, the temporary alternative space initiated by dealer Elizabeth Dee in the former Chelsea exhibition space of the Dia Art Foundation.

Earlier this year, Lauren Ross resigned as head of the art program to become curator of modern and contemporary art at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Ms. Alemani has also been active organizing shows at a variety of New York and international institutions, including "The Comfort of Strangers," at MoMA PS1 in conjunction with "Greater New York" last year, and "Glee," an exhibition themed around the television show of the same name, at Los Angeles's Blum & Poe gallery this summer.

Among the works now on view around the High Line are pieces by Darren Almond, Kim Beck, Spencer Finch and Sarah Sze.