William Griswold came to the Cleveland Museum of Art ready to party. With the museum celebrating its centennial in 2016, “there will be the requisite parties all year long, starting early in the year but certainly reaching a fevered pitch in June [the anniversary month],” he told me over lunch while visiting to work on two articles, including this Wall Street Journal review of the museum’s current Senufo show.
Bill Griswold, talking with a staff member about Family Game Night, in which he participated Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
Looking ahead to more substantive centennial plans, Bill revealed:
We hope to bring important loans of individual works of art from all over to Cleveland for an exhibition in our permanent collection galleries, as part of the celebration. Cleveland is a generous lender with a wonderful collection, so our sister institutions have expressed eagerness to help us out. In addition, we’re hoping to celebrate major gifts to the collection and to launch a whole series of behind-the scenes visits both for members and for the general audience.
Moving last May from the directorship of the Morgan Library & Museum to that of the Cleveland Museum, Griswold missed the hard work of both museums’ major expansions but savored the chance to enliven the completed buildings.
In Cleveland, he also inherited an incomplete capital campaign for the Rafael Viñoly-designed expansion, not to mention the messy business of what I had previously termed Manna from Hanna—the deplorable diversion to the capital campaign of up to $75 million over 10 years from the income (not principal) of four funds (most notably one established by mega-supporter Leonard Hanna) that were specifically designated by the deceased donors for acquisitions, not construction.
Over lunch at a corner table in Provenance, the museum’s restaurant, we discussed Griswold’s views on Viñoly’s building, the status of the capital campaign, and how he may partly redress the problematic decision (made before his arrival) to override donor intent (with court approval) by raiding acquisitions money:
ROSENBAUM: How much have your raised towards the capital campaign for the Viñoly expansion?
GRISWOLD: We’re very close to $300 million. As you know, the cost of the project was $320 million. $350 million was the original budget.
ROSENBAUM: So it came in under budget?
GRISWOLD: Absolutely. We hope to conclude the campaign within the next several months. I’d like to see it done by the summer.
ROSENBAUM: What have the new additions accomplished for the museum?
GRISWOLD: I think that the building is an enormous success. I think it has rationalized the layout of the museum in a way that was badly needed. Like so many institutions, it had grown in a very organic way over long period of time and had a rather confusing gallery layout. This was completely rethought and simplified in Rafael Viñoly’s plan.
I believe that architecturally it [Viñoly’s addition] is an extremely elegant building, hardly unassertive, but at the same time extraordinarily respectful of its preexisting neighbors—the 1916 building and the Marcel Breuer building, arguably two masterpieces of architecture, which Viñoly has not disregarded but, instead, has celebrated.
Cleveland Museum’s Rafael Viñoly-designed East Wing, which opened in June 2009 Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
Viñoly’s conception of his addition was as a ring in which the jewel was the 1916 building and the atrium is, in a way, a celebration of the façade of the original building. I love that about this expansion and I think it is reflected in the fact that the museum has two principal entrances, one of which is open primarily in the summer—the entrance to the 1916 building—and the other the entrance to the Marcel Breuer building.
Neither of them is the Rafael Viñoly building. I think that is a reflection of the extent to which he was very sensitive to the preceding architecture.
ROSENBAUM: In the fundraising, they wound up having to tap the income from endowments that were intended for acquisitions. Will those ever be reimbursed?
GRISWOLD: We don’t know for sure. I think we are going to need those monies to close out the campaign, so that we can move on. It’s important for others who are less familiar with this situation to understand that this is the draw from part of a very large portion of our endowment that is allocated to acquisitions. It is not the principal and it’s not permanent: It’s not going to go on indefinitely. But it is hard for me to see how we can actually reimburse the draw.
ROSENBAUM: So the $75 million is going to be gone?
GRISWOLD: It’s impossible to say how the campaign is going to go. But I would be comfortable with this approach: using what was allocated [from the acquisition endowments’ income] for the building project and simultaneously launching an effort to augment our endowed and spendable acquisition funds. I think, frankly, that’s easier than reimbursement, but it would have the same effect.
ROSENBAUM: Why is it easier?
GRISWOLD: Because I think people want to create their own funds. And then, eventually, you’d have a more robust accessions fund.
It’s important to add a footnote: The Cleveland Museum of Art has one of the most robust accessions funds of any museum anywhere in the world, even now.
Recent Acquisition: “Virgin and Child,” late 1200s, Mosan region Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
