The new director will be Earl A. Powell III, 48, the current head of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Where Brown is patrician-he’s descended from the family that gave Brown University its name–Powell is a pragmatic populist (“Call me Rusty”) who turned a mediocre provincial museum into a respected national showcase. And though the National Gallery’s press release on Powell listed his academic credentials (a Harvard doctorate) and specialties (he published a book on American landscape painter Thomas Cole), it made a big point about numbers: in his 12 years running the Los Angeles museum, the annual budget mushroomed from $8.5 million to $31 million; attendance doubled; he raised $80 million in a capital campaign, and oversaw a 281,000-square-foot expansion of the museum. His scholarly background was critical, said National Gallery president John Stevenson, but “management is probably the most important thing.”
Not that Carter Brown couldn’t roll up his sleeves and oversee the construction of I. M. Pei’s east wing or stage blockbuster exhibitions. When he announced his retirement at 57 in January, the art world was stunned; it was rumored that he was ill. Brown has categorically denied that; after a painful divorce, he said, he wants to spend time with his growing son and daughter. So the hunt for a successor began among the elite pool of top museum directors. Besides Powell, the serious contenders were John Walsh of the Getty Museum, in Malibu, Calif.; Edmund Pillsbury of the Kimbell Museum, in Ft. Worth, Texas; Anne D’Harnoncourt of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (“a token,” said one museum director), and Roger Mandle, deputy director of the National Gallery, said to have been Brown’s choice.
Walsh and Powell quickly emerged as front runners. Pillsbury, a scholar known for his acquisition of blue-chip old masters for the Kimbell, was said to have been done in partly by his prickly personality. Then, at the last minute, Walsh, charming and distinguished (but, since the Getty has millions, inexperienced in fund raising) withdrew his name. The buzz was that he’d used the National Gallery as a carrot to improve his position at the Getty. “Nonsense,” says Walsh, who’s deeply involved in the new Getty complex being built by Richard Meier. “I was flattered and glad to talk about the job with the National Gallery. But in the end, I felt that the Getty was the more challenging position and one that I was better suited for.”
For any museum director who feels left out, the game of musical chairs isn’t over. Who will fill Powell’s seat in L.A.? Say, Peter Marzio of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston? But Marzio, 49, who’s done an impressive job of raising money and visibility for his museum in the last decade (despite the Texas oil bust), says he’s not leaving: the museum just announced plans for a new $40 million building. Meanwhile, an executive-search firm is looking for a new head for the Cleveland Museum of Art; the current director retires next year. Alan Shestack, the impeccable scholar who heads the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is a name that crops up for that post.
Like most museum directors today, much of Shestack’s creative energies go into figuring out how to keep his museum afloat. The Boston museum has come up with an inventive, if controversial, scheme: it’s lending impressionist paintings to Tokyo and Kobe, Japan, and, for a fat annual fee, it’s helping the city of Nagoya build a museum. These deals, says Shestack, will “go a long way to closing the [$3 million] gap” in the museum’s $25 million annual budget. At the Detroit Institute of Arts, a brutal cut by the state legislature of $6.8 million from the museum budget (about 41 percent) forced director Samuel Sachs to less artful solutions: firing nearly half the staff and closing half the galleries. In Philadelphia, the city council just voted to slash its annual grant to the museum in half-a loss of $560,000. Though the museum is faced with cutting education programs and closing galleries, D’Harnoncourt doesn’t want to lose sight of the main reason she’s there. “It’s terribly important for a museum director to care enormously about art,” she says.
That’s the rub for almost any museum director. Rusty Powell has proven his skill in management, public relations and polities. “The charisma and ability to get along with Congress is very important,” says trustee Stevenson of the National Gallery director-since $52 million comes from the federal government annually. But if there are any questions about Powell’s leadership, they stem from an occasional slip in standards. The Los Angeles museum hosted the Helga pictures by Andrew Wyeth in 1988, but to be fair, Carter Brown played Barnum to Powell’s Bailey-the show originated at the National Gallery. Right now, there’s a fuss over the Los Angeles museum’s exhibit of Ferragamo shoes, underwritten by the Ferragamo family-a show that seems to promote a commercial enterprise. Powell justifies it on “art-historical grounds.”
But if Powell sticks to his plans for Washington, quality shouldn’t be an issue. He’s said he thinks blockbuster loan exhibitions are a thing of the past. “One of the great benefits of the National Gallery is its unparalleled permanent collection,” says the new director, who was a curator at the museum in the ’70s. “I’d like to use the collections in new and innovative ways.”
Name: Anne D’Harnoncourt Age: 48 Occupation: Director, Philadelphia Museum of Art Greatest Accomplishment: Helped raise $53 million in recent capital campaign The Buzz: That she was a National Gallery contender just because she’s a woman
Photo: (GREGORY HEISLER)
Name: Peter Marzio Age: 49 Occupation: Director, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Greatest Accomplishment: In 10 years, he tripled the annual budget despite the oil bust The Buzz: That he’s a candidate for Powell’s old job in California
Photo: (LUCIANO RODRIGUEZ)
Name: John Walsh Age: 54 Occupation: Director, J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Calif Greatest Accomplishment: Turning a billionaire’s dream into a jewel of a museum The Buzz: When he said no to Washington, he enhanced his position at the Getty
Photo: (JIM McHUGH-LaMOINE)
Name: Edmund P. Pillsbury Age: 49 Occupation: Director, Kimball Art Museum, Ft. Worth, Texas Greatest Accomplishment: Bought blue-chip old masters like Jacopo Bassano The Buzz: That his prickly personality could have cost him the Washington job
