2001 Update - The Harvard University Program for Art Museum Directors recently gathered its third "class." Co-chaired by James Wood, President and Director of the Art Institute of Chicago and James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot director, Harvard University Art Museums, this year's class includes directors from the National Gallery Washington, the National Gallery London, the Metropolitan Museum, the Cleveland Museum, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Studio Museum of Harlem, and the Des Moines Art Center, as well as the director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum. As in the past, the program participants will meet twice for three days each in seminars with faculty from Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Kennedy School of Government, while the four "lesser" experienced directors will also meet for a six-day intensive management program offered by the Harvard Business School and entitled "Strategic Perspectives in Not-for-Profit Management." To date, twenty-four of our nation's leading directors have taken part in the Program, and we believe it is on sound footing.

In addition, with the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Clark Art Institute, the Program has underwritten management programs and seminars organized by the Association of Art Museum Directors.

Background from 1997 press release - 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 are invited to participate. In addition, more senior directors have also been invited to participate.

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.

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 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 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.