Michael Conforti, director of the Clark Art Institute, will be scurrying to Indianapolis from this Sunday’s Picasso Looks at Degas preview party at his Williamstown, MA, museum, to turn over the presidency of the Association of Art Museum Directors to the Minneapolis Institute’s Kaywin Feldman at AAMD’s annual meeting, June 6-9.
Will Feldman eye Conforti in the same way that guest curators Richard Kendall and Elizabeth
Cowling say that Picasso looked at Degas—“from emulation, to confrontation and parody, to homage”? We’ll have a year to find out (and only three months to see the Clark’s exhibition, June 13-Sept. 12).
One thing on AAMD’s formal agenda is the continuing work (scroll down) of its Deaccessioning Task Force. On the informal agenda, I feel reasonably certain, is a Max Anderson-led preview of his Indianapolis Museum of Arts’ new Art & Nature Park, which opens to the public on June 20.
I’m wondering whether the important museum-ethics issues recently raised by this, this and this (New Museum’s Dakis Fracas; LA MOCA’s Dealer-to-Director; Brandeis University’s Rent-a-Rose) will be directly and publicly addressed at the conclave. I hope so. I wouldn’t bet on it. Here’s Conforti’s previous statement (scroll down) related to the Dakis Fracas.
In addition to being Feldman’s first meeting as head of the nation’s leading professional organization in her field, next week’s gathering will be the first that dealer-to-director Jeffrey Deitch of LA MOCA will be eligible to attend.
Will the AAMD elders mentor him?
CORRECTION: This just in from Janet Landay, executive director of AAMD:
Jeffrey Deitch is not
eligible to attend [AAMD’s June meeting], as he is not a member.
Really? I have a former list (from March 2008) of AAMD member institutions, which I had saved to my computer from the association’s own website. LA MOCA was on that list. I have a query in to Landay seeking further clarification. I’ll update here, if I receive more information.
UPDATE: Landay explains that a new director “doesn’t automatically become an AAMD member, even if his/her
institution has been represented in the past. All potential members go
through an application process.”