Sean O’Harrow, director-designate of University of Iowa Museum of Art
After visiting Iowa in April 2009 to give a talk on deaccessioning at the University of Iowa, I wrote this about my impression of Sean O’Harrow, director of the Figge Art Museum in Davenport:
I got to chat at length with Sean at the dinner that followed my deaccession lecture…and I was impressed by his knowledge and his ideas for energizing the Figge. I’ve got a feeling that his current position will not be his gig for life.
Little did I know that he would relocate very soon, but not very far away. Last week, the University of Iowa, Iowa City, announced that O’Harrow would leave his Figge gig to become director of the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA), effective Nov. 15. The university museum’s interim director, attorney Pamela White (who has staunchly defended its celebrated 1943 Pollock “Mural” from those who had wanted to monetize it), did not apply for the permanent post, according to O’Harrow. (One who did apply was Kent Lydecker, the Metropolitan Museum’s former associate director for education.)
O’Harrow, as you may remember, was the white knight who gave shelter and exhibition space at the Figge to the UIMA’s homeless collection after that museum was flooded by the Iowa River in June 2008. The works (other than those that can be displayed on the university’s campus) will remain at the Figge until a new campus facility opens, O’Harrow said.
When asked last week by B.A. Morelli of the Iowa City Press-Citizen for his views about selling the Pollock to help fund the university’s flood recovery efforts, O’Harrow replied:
That was one of the most ludicrous ideas I’ve ever heard. That would be like selling your grandmother.
Jackson Pollock, “Mural,” 1943, as installed at Figge Art Museum
Last week, O’Harrow told me that the university was still “going through the funding application process with FEMA, so there is no timetable [for building a new museum]. Having said that, everyone wants to move as quickly as possible, so until we have money for a new museum building, I expect that we will need to get creative with our exhibitions and programming.”
He hopes eventually to convert the museum’s calamity into an opportunity:
It was a horrible flood, but I believe this disaster gives the institution a unique chance to reinvent itself for the new era. Most museums, if not all of them, have enough legacy infrastructure to prevent them from properly serving the new generations of museum
visitors.I will work hard to make sure we have as forward-thinking and as flexible a museum as possible, both in terms of physical infrastructure as well as organizational structure, so that we are prepared for the changes in the museum world that are guaranteed to occur.
The solemn photo at the top is the official university portrait, but I much prefer my shot of the unharrowed O’Harrow, cheerfully showing me the level to which Mississippi River flood waters had previously risen beside (but not inside) the Figge, and assuring me that the David Chipperfield-designed building had been engineered to defeat deluges:
