With Renovations Needed, Art Museums Seek Leader

The forecast for the Fogg Art Museum is hazy.

A year ago, Harvard’s art museum officials expected that by now they’d have a new art museum under construction. Instead, without a permanent director at their helm, they struggle to manage an ailing building that hasn’t seen major repairs since 1927.

In December, long-time director James Cuno left the Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM). His decision to leave came just weeks before University planners scrapped plans to build a new modern art museum along the Charles River.

Museum officials say they desperately need space for exhibitions, storage and restoration. The vast majority of their collection cannot be displayed because of inadequate space.

Construction efforts are now focused on renovations of the Fogg Art Museum. The dilapidated building needs a climate-controlled environment, new facilities and mechanics to adequately protect its collections.

But acting Director Marjorie B. Cohn says the much-needed renovations can’t begin until a new director is chosen.

A search committee composed of art museum and University officials has whittled the list of candidates to five and expect a decision by mid-summer.

After Cuno’s golden era of financial growth and international prestige, HUAM’s next move is temporarily stalemated.

Crossing the Atlantic

Citing “both professional and personal factors,” Cuno left in January to lead the Courtald Institute of Art at the University of London. Cohn, who is Weyerhaeuser curator of prints and a 42-year veteran of the museums, was named acting director by University Provost Steven E. Hyman. Cohn also served that role during HUAM’s last director transition.

Cuno, a former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors and an internationally regarded scholar and curator, was appointed Cabot director of the museums 11 years ago. During his tenure, the art museums established a center for the study of prints, drawings and photographs and a department of modern art.

Cuno doubled the staff to 220 employees, adding many new fellowships and curators, and increased the annual budget from $10 million to $18 million, according to a museum spokesperson. He presided over the most successful capital campaign in the museums’ history, and brought over 13,000 new works of art into the collection.

“In 10 years time, I would like to see the art museums housed in better and larger facilities to advance their mission,” Cuno wrote in an e-mail. “And I would like to see the art museums even further engaged in and valued as crucial to the institutional life of the University.”

Though now absent from Cambridge, Cuno keeps in close contact with his former colleagues, and in March returned to Harvard to deliver a lecture on the state of art museums in Europe.

Cuno says he enjoys his new job.

“The challenges are great, both financial and political, but there is a far higher degree of respect and cooperation between art historians in the various spheres of our domain than in the U.S.,” he says.

At the farewell party last December, the Fogg displayed over 70 new pieces donated to the collection in Cuno’s honor, including an original ballerina drawing by Degas, Cuno’s favorite artist.

By all accounts, Cuno was devoted to the art museums’ role in education. He taught an art history course and a popular freshman seminar.

“It’s almost hard to think back to where we were when he arrived,” says Abrams Curator of Drawings William W. Robinson. “In every area, there’s been a tremendous leap in the level of activity and quality of programming, acquisitions and lectures.”

Robinson says he admired Cuno’s directing style as well.

“He had a great sense of how directors and curators should work together,” Robinson says. “He made it easier for whatever the curators wanted to do. That’s very rare in a director to have the balance of supporting and enabling without domineering.”

Another Brick in the Wall

Cuno left in the wake of the University’s decision to ditch a project creating a new museum in Cambridge’s Riverside neighborhood.

Riverside community members fiercely opposed development of a new museum on the Mahoney’s Garden Center plot. After two years of wrangling, the proposal was shelved.

“I very much would have wanted to have completed our building projects,” Cuno says. “These are crucial to the life of the Art Museums and to their continuing contribution to the teaching, research and cultural life of the University.”

There are no plans to revive the proposals.

“It’s really just no longer part of the portfolio,” Cohn says.

Cohn says efforts now focus on maximizing the potential of existing space, especially by renovating the Fogg, which has not been worked on since 1927. With no way to manage the temperature in the building, curators say they cannot show certain works for fear of damage.

In addition to creating a climate controlled environment, the building must undergo major repairs in plumbing and wiring and increase disability access.

The plans also call for drastic reorganization of the existing museums’ collections.

In order to maximize space, the Fine Arts Library may move across the street from Werner Otto Hall, adjacent to the Fogg, to the current Sackler building, which houses the Department of History of Art and Architecture. Werner Otto Hall will be rebuilt as an exhibition space.

“It’s really more of a reconfiguration than a reconstruction,” Cohn says.

Though the Corporation accepted the preliminary plans with their support, according to Cohn, they remain apprehensive about money.

The renovations will inevitably lead to a drop-off in exhibition activity, Robinson says.

“The level of intensity won’t be the same for a while,” he says.

The museums will look for temporary office and exhibition space in Watertown, Allston and Cambridge. When the renovations are complete, that space will become a secondary off-site storage plant.

Robinson says that until Cuno’s successor is appointed, plans for the renovations will not be finalized.

“It’s really something for the new director to do, since they will be the one raising money and should play an integral part in the planning,” he says.

The Fogg needs a finalized plan and appropriate permits from Cambridge, along with substantial fundraising, before they can begin construction.

Still, even with major renovations to the existing buildings, Cohn says the obvious need for additional space has led to proposals that one or more should ultimately move to Allston.

“One supposes we’ll have some role in Allston, but you’re talking 12 years away, and the renovations to the Fogg can’t wait,” she says.

With the primary mission of undergraduate and graduate teaching, museum officials say their location on the edge of the Yard is ideal.

Cuno previously expressed concerns about a possible move to Allston.

“In my opinion, the art museums need to be within easy access to teaching wherever that occurs, especially by the schools and departments with which the art museums are most involved,” Cuno says.

Growing Pains

Robinson says the search for a new director and for renovations have the museums playing a “waiting game.”

“We have five things at the starting line, and none can really go on until the others do,” he says.

And all future planning depends on the arrival of a new director.

“We can’t really plan because we can’t do it without a new director, and we can’t get a new director without a stable, forward-looking plan,” Cohn says. “It’s a real chicken and the egg issue.”

A search committee composed of museum curators and Faculty of Arts and Sciences professors has proposed a list of five possible candidates, whittled from an original list of 80, Cohn says.

Hyman will recommend two final candidates to University President Lawrence H. Summers, who will make the final decision. Cohn says she expects a nomination by mid-summer.

Though HUAM is widely considered the best university art institution in the world, Cohn says, the current challenges facing the museums may make it a tough sell for prospective directors.

“It would be great for the kind of people who like to sink their teeth in a creative project,” Cohn says. “Of course, a possible new building would have been more attractive than a renovation, but it’s really a creative reconfiguring, they will have input…. It’s a chance to make a difference in the institution, and that’s really why people take jobs.”

But Cuno will be “a hard act to follow,” Robinson says, especially since Cuno’s service was facilitated by good financial times and a sympathetic University president in Neil L. Rudenstine.

“We’re looking for someone with a high metabolic rate,” Cohn jokes. “Charisma, someone able to inspire everyone to work hard.”

Above all, the new director needs to understand the art museums’ mission and the difference between academic and public institutions, Cohn says.

Cohn hopes she will give up her role as acting director by the end of this calendar year.

“There are some things you can do as acting director that please you immensely, others that are difficult and other things you can’t do,” she says. “It’s a mixed bag.”

‘Never Ever Looked Better’

Despite the dearth of space and up-to-date facilities, the past year has seen significant strides in the museums’ technology and programming.

“We’ve never ever looked better, in terms of what’s on view,” Robinson says. “It’s really the culmination of the Cuno era, all the rich programming we’ve been developing.”

Last year over 131,000 people visited Harvard’s museums. Creation of the “Harvard Hot Ticket” increased access to the museums by letting visitors be admitted to all six museums at a discount.

The noted “Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Modern Art” exhibition at the Fogg showcased works by Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. A distinguished collector, Lois Orswell bequeathed her collection to the Fogg five years ago, and the show was the first time her collection was shown as a cohesive group.

A well-attended lecture series brought directors from Paris’ Louvre, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and London’s National Gallery to Cambridge.

The Collections Online Initiative has made Harvard one of the few museums to have images and information about their holdings on the web.

According to Gillian McMullen, who manages the project, there are currently 12,700 object records online, slightly over half of the permanent collection. They periodically add more records, allowing scholars across the country to study the images online. McMullen says very few museums of Harvard’s size have such an extensive online database.

There are still objects that haven’t been researched, but McMullen says eventually the entire HUAM collection will be available online.

“We’d love it if we were up to 100 percent in another year,” she says.

But as the art museums expanded their Cambridge collection, many of their most prized works went on tour. The Grenville L. Winthrop Collection opened in Lyon, France in March, and after touring London and New York City it will return to Cambridge early next year. The show includes more than 200 paintings, drawings and sculptures by such notable artists as Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh, normally displayed as part of the Fogg’s showings.

Some professors back on Harvard’s campus expressed concerns at the artwork’s absence.

“I strongly believe the collection should not leave the museums whose strength it is to have it,” Professor of History of Art and Architecture Ewa Lajer-Burcharth told The Crimson in March.

The museum also expanded efforts to ensure that none of their pieces were looted during World War II. Museum officials, led by Sarah Kianovsky, research the historical provenance of their pieces.

While no stolen pieces have been found, Kianovsky says they would return such works to their rightful owners.

—Staff writer Kristi L. Jobson can be reached at jobson@fas.harvard.edu.