Jennifer Farrell, the new curator of exhibitions at the University of Virginia Art Museum. (Photo: by Cole Geddy)

The University of Virginia Art Museum has tapped scholar and curator Jennifer Farrell, who has a long history of working at institutions throughout New York and New England, to be its new curator of exhibitions.

Ms. Farrell comes to the museum from the New York-based Nancy Graves Foundation, which maintains the archive of the late sculptor and painter Nancy Graves and makes grants to artists.

Before joining the Nancy Graves Foundation, Ms. Farrell served as a fellow and then assistant curator of prints, drawings and photography at the Yale University Art Gallery in in New Haven, Connecticut.

The newly appointed curator's previous curatorial credits includes "Empire/State: Artists Engaging Globalization," which she co-curated while enrolled in the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2002. "The weave of connections here--political, social, formal--is dense, as it is throughout this thoughtful show," New York Times critic Holland Cotter wrote of the exhibition, which featured, in Mr. Cotter's words, "[p]olitically alert Conceptual art" by artists like Mark Lombardi and Emily Jacir.

Ms. Farrell has a Ph.D. in art history and a certificate in film studies from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a B.A. in art history from Smith College.

"This is an automatic process that's happening," said a staffer with the Allen campaign. "You can't be proactive about this."

The process has to be finished by Tuesday.

In the meantime, Jim Webb, who leads by about 7,000 votes, is planning his transition.

And one of the leading experts of Virginia politics thinks it is over.

'There is nowhere to make up those votes," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. "I have had people in both parties tell me that there is zero chance."

"George Allen's people are trying to figure out if they can come up with a way to throw out 7000 votes. And they have to only throw out Webb votes. Someone has to have a long talk with Allen and say 'look, it's not going to happen, it's over. You will have a long rich private life. You are not going to be President or Senator and it's over.' He will have to get used to being called ex-senator."

--Jason Horowitz