HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS INITIATES PROGRAM FOR ART MUSEUM DIRECTORS

For Immediate Release: November 26, 1997

Cambridge, Massachusetts-The Harvard University Art Museums is please to announce the creation of the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors. The year-long program is designed to introduce recently appointed art museum directors to current thinking about matters of leadership, management, and the latest trends in university-based art history teaching and research. "This is a very exciting opportunity for our profession," Harvard Art Museums director James Cuno said in announcing the program. "Our country's art museums are under tremendous pressure socially, financially, and artistically. And all too rarely do we directors get a chance to meet together in small groups and in the company of leading scholars to discuss ways to deal with these pressures. It is our intention to encourage leadership in the field and to both equip art museums directors with the skills needed to meet today's challenges and inspire them to assume positions of leadership within the profession. Of course the latter is not easy," Cuno admitted. "But at a time when art itself is being attacked as extraneous to the life of our nation, something has to be done. We need to develop strong voices in favor of art and strong to leaders to direct our art museums. We expect our program to help in this regard."

Harvard has had a long tradition in preparing art museum directors, curators, and conservators. Currently directors with Harvard degrees include those at the Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Many curators and conservators at those and other museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the High Museum of Art, also studied at Harvard. "No university has been more influential in the museum world, in this country or in many other countries, than Harvard," Cuno noted. "And we take great pride in this. Adding a directors program to our current and successful curatorial and conservation internship programs is both timely and important. We are grateful to the anonymous donor who had the foresight to make this possible."

Recently appointed directors invited to participate in this years' program include Susana Leval of the El Museo del Barrio, New York; Timothy Rub of the Hood Museum at Dartmouth; Emily Sano of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; and Gary Vikan of the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. In addition, four more senior directors have also been invited to participate. These include Glenn Lowry of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kinshasha Conwill of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Mimi Gardner Gates of the Seattle Art Museum; and Peter Marzio of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums and James N. Wood, director and president of The Art Institute of Chicago will serve as co-chairs of the program.

The directors will meet three times at Harvard over the course of the academic year. At each meeting, faculty from two or more of the University professional schools (the Harvard Business School, Kennedy School of Government, Graduate School of Education, and Law School, for example) as well as from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will lead seminars. The fall session, Thursday, November 13, through Sunday, November 16, 1997, focused on leadership and decision making and included such seminars as The Anatomy of Public Leadership led by professor Howard Gardner, School of Education; Whom Do We Serve?: Principal-Agent Theory lead by professor Richard Zeckhauser, Kennedy School of Government; The Politics of Culture, lead by professor Nathan Glazer; and Leadership Without Easy Answers lead by professor Ronald Heifetz, Kennedy School of Government.

Future sessions will take place in the spring and early summer. In session two the Fellows will complete the Harvard Business School's program, Strategic Perspectives for Non-Profit Management. In this session the Fellows will be joined by the CEO's of a wide variety of not-for-profit institutions. The final four-day session in the spring of 1998 is comprised of a rigorous agenda of seminars with selected faculty members chosen to build on the experiences of sessions one and two. The three sessions are deliberately spaced throughout the year to allow participants to apply principles learned within their home institutions and return to the group for feed-back and follow-up.

The directors program was developed over the past three years by James Cuno, and James Wood, along with a board of advisors comprised of art museum directors and trustees from across the country. The advisory board includes John D. Nichols of Illinois Toolworks, Bruce B. Dayton of Minnesota, Richard Koshalek, director of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Katherine C. Lee, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Glenn Lowry, director of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, and James Wood of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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For general information on the Harvard University Art Museums, please call (617) 495-9400. For press information or photographs, please contact Kate McShea Ewen at (617) 495-2397. For more information on events, please contact the Friends, Fellows, and Special Programs Office at (617) 495-4544. World Wide Web: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu. The Art Museums' facilities are wheelchair accessible.

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The Harvard University Art Museums comprise three museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum), all located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA, at the intersection of Quincy Street and Broadway, adjacent to Harvard Yard. The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and on Saturday mornings. For special tour reservations, please call (617) 496-8576. General tours are offered Monday through Friday from September through June. The Fogg tour is at 11:00 a.m.; the Busch-Reisinger tour is at 1:00 p.m.; and the Sackler is at 2:00 p.m. 

The Harvard University Art Museums is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.