Museums

The news actually came out yesterday in an afternoon press release (but I was a little busy yesterday with other news): the board of the Cincinnati Art Museum has chosen Cameron Kitchin as the museum’s director. Kitchin previously headed the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tenn. 

In the press release, the board indicated that he is “a nationally recognized innovator and leader in the museum field.”  I confess I’ve not noticed him before, though that may have more to do with the PR department there and the lack of national news coverage in middle America than it does with him. In his director’s welcome at the Brook, he wrote “The Brooks is your art museum, a place where you can experience the transformative power of art.” I’m glad he got right to the art. 

The Cincinnati release stresses what are now popular values:

He oversaw the growth of the [Brooks] museum as a community-based institution, leveraging the museum’s significant collections and history to forge new partnerships with a wide network of cultural institutions, educational entities, universities and social service agencies. Under his leadership, the Brooks engaged in rigorous new educational initiatives, pursued exciting original scholarship and successfully achieved broad appeal in exhibitions and programs. 

Kitchin led the museum through two comprehensive strategic plans, a capital plan and a groundbreaking program in early childhood education in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution. Other significant new achievements included art therapy, Alzheimer’s services, teen art programs and overhauls of critical museum systems, collections databases and security infrastructure. Kitchin’s innovations and effectiveness in reaching new audiences across the entire community, building bridges through public service and leading a diverse and talented professional museum team drew the attention of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s search committee. In addition, Kitchin’s use of technology as a tool for exploring art and his creative public programming impressed the museum’s board.

We’ll see what happens in Cincinnati, which is a smaller town (population 297,000 versus 655,000 for Memphis), but the Brooks’ collection of 9,000 objects pales in comparison to the CAM’s 60,000.

Kitchin previously was executive director of the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and before that “managed Economics Research Associates’ national consulting practice for museums and cultural attractions.” That’s an interesting credential.  He earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Harvard University (class of 1993) and then got an MBA “with a concentration in not-for-profit and museum management” from William & Mary (’99).  

The search took seven months; previous director Aaron Betsky “stepped down” (under fire) in January and left the building on May 1. Kitchin starts his new job on Oct. 1, and I hope he brings stability (see below), as well as the best exhibitions he can attract, to Cincinnati. Betsky had a very mixed record on that score.  

The museum also suffered a lot of turmoil. As he arrives, Esther Bell, who was appointed CAM’s Curator of European Painting, Sculpture and Drawings on October, 2012, got a new job. She is leaving to become curator in charge of European paintings at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, beginning in September, according to SFGate.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Cincinnati Art Museum

News the other day that the National Academy had elected 13 new Academicians reminded me that I meant to comment on the new title there, announced in the recent shakeup by Carmine Branagan, the director.

First, the new members: visual artists Ida Applebroog, Jane Dickson, Martin Puryear, Edward Ruscha, Joan Semmel and Stanley Whitney; and architects Peter Bohlin, Preston Scott Cohen, Michael Manfredi and Marion Weiss, Eric Owen Moss, Antoine Predock and Charles Renfro.

Second, the idea: you will  recall that several weeks ago, Branagan created a stir when she laid off members of the curatorial staff (among others) and appointed Maurizio Pellegrin to the new post of “creative director” for the Academy’s museum and art school. While most of the upset was about the layoffs, there were snickers about the title and the fact that Pellegrin was “an artist and educator with little curatorial experience,” as The New York Times phrased it. It continued:

Ms. Branagan said that Mr. Pellegrin (at left), though not a trained curator, “has a vision that I think will bring a lot of energy and relevance” to the museum and school. But he has already drawn some online ridicule for comments he made on the New York Observer’s art news blog, Gallerist, in which he compared his new position to Anna Wintour’s at Vogue. “You don’t need a hierarchy,” he said in an interview with the blog, which first reported the layoffs.

In an interview Monday, Mr. Pellegrin addressed the criticism by saying: “I have confidence in my extreme passion and my expertise, and other people’s doubts I cannot answer for.”

Those comments? ““No, no,” Mr. Pellegrin said, “we don’t need a senior curator because it’s me. It’s my vision. Let’s look at Vogue. Who do you have at Vogue? You have Anna Wintour. You don’t need a hierarchy.” Instead, “I’ll have a team of six people working for me, and that is enough.”

That was weeks ago — so am I writing now? Because on July 17, Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum, promoted Massimiliano Gioni to the title of Artistic Director and, while he apparently has not compared his job to Wintour’s, no one made a peep. In the release, Phillips said:

We are not a typical museum. Nor is Artistic Director a typical museum title. But it accurately reflects the expansiveness of Massimiliano’s vision and the wide spectrum of activities it contains.

Is this just another term for chief curator? I don’t think so. Phillips also said:

In his new position as Artistic Director, Massimiliano will take an even more active role working with me to envision and plan the next phase of our institution’s growth.

In my experience, creative enterprises, from magazines and prime time TV divisions to film directors to opera companies, are often run best when they have someone with a strong overarching vision and a team who helps makes that happen — think of people, aside from Wintour, like William Shawn, Tina Brown, Roger Ailes, Orson Welles, John Huston, etc. It doesn’t work as well in a large, broad, universal museum which require many curators, and where the best will always want their vision to shine.

But like the New Museum, the National Academy Museum isn’t a typical museum — and it’s struggling to find an identify that works in a city with a lot of competition. I am not sure I agree with Pellegrin’s vision (” He has aspirations for a more involved architectural program and to also include “cinematography” in future exhibitions. He listed “graphic design, furniture, relations between Asian and Western architecture” as points of interest” Gallerist said), but I’m willing to let him try it. Nothing else seems to have worked there.

And I would not be surprised if other small museums try out titles, and jobs, like creative director and artistic director.

On a completely different continent and in a completely different scale from the news about Los Angeles, there is word of another contemporary art museum — African contemporary art. This proposed museum, which sounds quite wonderful if it happens, is in Capetown.

On Cape Town’s waterfront at the southern tip of Africa, the world’s biggest museum of contemporary art from across the continent is being carved from a conglomeration of concrete tubes nine storeys high.

The $50 million (36.7 million euro) project to transform the grim functionality of 42 disused colonial grain silos into an ultramodern tribute to African creativity is driven by an international team of art experts and architects.

For Mark Coetzee, executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, the project is the fulfilment of a pledge he made to himself a quarter of a century ago.

“It has been my life dream to build a contemporary art museum in Africa,” the South African-born former director of the Rubell Family Collection in Miami told AFP. “When I left Cape Town 25 years ago I vowed to return only when I had the skills and the relationships to make this happen.”

That is an excerpt from an article published on July 13 on the Global Post.  Other reports note that the museum will transform 42 disused colonial grain silos into the museum. The architect is Thomas Heatherwick, a Brit. The photo here is from his studio.  More important, the Zeitz Museum starts life with an extensive permanent collection donated to it in perpetuity by German entrepreneur and former Puma chairman Jochen Zeitz. He has also committed to underwriting operational costs of the museum and providing a budget for acquisitions of works made after 2000.

You may have seen parts of the Zeitz collection on view in various European countries.