Museum Faces Grace
New Spaces and More

By Stan Parchin

Colin B. Bailey, Chief Curator of Manhattan's Frick Collection since October 2000, was named Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator on May 2, 2007. He fills the museum's first newly endowed position for a primary curatorial staff member thanks, in part, to a $2 million (US) challenge grant from The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. About Art History congratulates Dr. Bailey on his most recent appointment.

The Dallas Museum of Art announced on May 10, 2007 that John R. Lane, its Eugene McDermott Director, will retire in May 2008 and be replaced by Bonnie Pitman, the institution's Deputy Director. Ms. Pitman was most recently the project director for Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship.

The trustees of London's National Gallery met on Friday, May 11, 2007 and began making arrangements to replace its director, Charles Saumarez Smith, who assumes the posts of chief executive and secretary at the Royal Academy of Arts this September.

Manhattan's prestigious Morgan Library & Museum revealed on May 23, 2007 that William M. Griswold will assume its directorship in early 2008. In what seems like inexplicably rapid speed, this scholar of Italian Old Master drawings, who previously served as the museum's Charles W. Engelhard Curator and Head of the Department of Drawings and Prints from 1995 to 2001, is presently director and president of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He was associate director for collections at Los Angeles' J. Paul Getty Museum, where he served briefly as acting director. At The Morgan, Griswold will replace the retiring Charles E. Pierce, Jr., who has led the world-class library and art museum for 20 years through the last two expansions of its Madison Avenue campus.

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas made public on May 25, 2007 the resignation of Timothy Potts as its director, effective September 1, 2007. After more than eight years of dedicated service to the institution, he will replace the retiring Duncan Robinson as director of Cambridge, England's Fitzwilliam Museum in January 2008. Dr. Potts felt that it's time for the Kimbell to search for new leadership as it embarks on a much-needed program of physical expansion, designed by architect Renzo Piano (b. 1937). While his successor at the Kimbell is being chosen, Potts will continue to work there in a consultative capacity, helping to guide Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, an international loan exhibition to be shown exclusively in Fort Worth. During the current director's tenure, major acquisitions were made in the areas of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Precolumbian and Asian art as well as Italian Renaissance sculpture and Northern European painting. Under Dr. Potts' aegis, the Kimbell Art Museum hosted such popular special exhibitions as Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, Gauguin and Impressionism and Mondrian: The Path to Abstraction.

It is with deep regret that About.com Art History reports the passing of James Beck, Ph.D., renowned scholar of Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture, on May 26, 2007. A distinguished member of Columbia University's Department of Art History and Archaeology for four decades, Professor Beck authored 13 books, including three on Raphael (1483-1520), in addition to numerous articles. His Italian Renaissance Painting (Konemann, 1999) remains a staple of college curricula worldwide. Dr. Beck was a vociferous critic of modern conservation methods. He gained public notoriety for his outspoken opposition to the restorations of both the Last Supper (1495-98) by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).

In 1992, Beck teamed with Michael Daley, a British artist and journalist. They co-founded ArtWatch International, a nonprofit organization whose sole purpose is to observe and report on the restoration of famous artworks. Ardently opposed to the cleaning of Michelangelo's sculpture David (1501-04), Dr. Beck last challenged New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005 regarding the authorship of its Madonna and Child (ca. 1300) by the Sienese painter Duccio di Buoninsegna (act. ca. 1278-1318), a panel painting purchased for a reported $45 million (US). Keith Christiansen, Jayne Wrightsman Curator of European Painting at The Met, refuted Dr. Beck's charges convincingly in an extensive article published in the February 2007 edition of Apollo.

Image credits:

Colin B. Bailey
Photograph provided by The Frick Collection

John R. Lane and Bonnie Pitman
Photograph provided by Dallas Museum of Art

Timothy Potts
Photograph provided by Kimbell Art Museum