INDIANAPOLIS, IND. (AP) — A former Denver curator planned to join the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) as director of a new department focusing on American and European design.

R. Craig Miller was slated to join the IMA’s staff in October as curator of design arts and director of design initiatives. The creation of the new design department is part of a museum restructuring project.

Miller was curator of the Department of Architecture, Design & Graphics at the Denver Museum of Art for 17 years. He also worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as an associate curator for 13 years.

“Craig Miller is renowned for his ability to build exceptional collections from scratch,” Maxwell Anderson, the Melvin & Bren Simon director and CEO of IMA, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to bring his talents to Indianapolis, and to have Craig oversee our design initiatives and help us in building a compelling and fully rounded department of Twentieth to Twenty-First Century design.”

Miller was developing an exhibition focused on Western European design titled “EuroDesign 1985–2005,” which was scheduled to open in 2009.

Last month IMA received a $10 million gift from shopping mall developer Melvin Simon and his wife to endow museum director Anderson’s position by underwriting his annual salary of about $350,000. Officials said it was the largest gift of its kind to a US art museum.

The money that was earmarked for Anderson’s salary was expected to be spent on an educational program for third grade public school students and a new online database of artwork.