“Breaking the Brand”: Malcolm Rogers Reflects on Successful, Controversial Directorship at Museum of Fine Arts Boston (with video)

Malcolm Rogers, retiring Aug. 3 from his 21-year stint as director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (the longest such tenure in that museum’s history), will soon be going the George Goldner route: He plans to advise a wealthy art-collecting couple.

In announcing last January’s retirement from the Metropolitan Museum, Goldner, who was chairman of its department of drawings and prints since 1993 (and, before that, curator at the Getty Museum), disclosed his plan to “work as an advisor to Leon Black, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum, in building his collection.” (A distinguished collector of old master drawings, Black’s greatest claim to artworld fame is having reportedly purchased Munch’s “The Scream” in 2012.)

When I recently asked Rogers about his own future plans, I had expected the “too soon to tell” response. Instead, he revealed that he had agreed to “a consultancy” that would allow him to spend time on both sides of the Atlantic, even though he would relocate to the home he owns in England’s Cotswolds (which, for a few summers, had been home to John Singer Sargent).

My further prodding elicited a few details about is relationship with the wealthy (unidentified) American couple who are embellishing their new home. I asked if he had already started recommending purchases to them (which could conflict with his current gig). He replied that he was still learning about this clients’ tastes and had only advised them not to buy something that had been recommended by their architect or decorator.

Geraldine Fabrikant published the scoop about Rogers’ plans last week in the NY Times, having overheard my conversation with him at the Museum of Fine Arts’ NYC press lunch. (Malcolm was seated across from me; Geraldine, next to me.) Perhaps not distinctly hearing all that was said, Geraldine managed to muddle the meaning: Rogers had mentioned several areas of specialization, in answer to my question about where his own expertise lies. He was not (as the Times report suggests) describing the types of art that he planned to recommend to his new clients. He said that his suggestions to them would be determined by what he learned regarding their own interests.

A reporter who took a buyout from the Times (but still contributes), Fabrikant also missed the name of what she called the “leading British museum” that had “considered [Rogers] for a position” (in Fabrikant’s words). Rogers had, in fact, identified that institution to me (in a lowered voice) as the National Gallery, which he said had shortlisted him for its directorship, soon to be relinquished by Nicholas Penny. “I knew I wasn’t going to get it,” Rogers added. The chosen candidate, Gabriele Finaldi, was, in Rogers’ view, the most deserving.

Finaldi, now deputy director of the Prado, was thought to have been the other member of a two-person shortlist from which Penny was selected.

I asked why Penny had decided to leave the National Gallery after a seven-year tenure. Rogers replied that he believed that Penny, who had previously served as senior curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the National Gallery, Washington, had wanted to act as both curator and director. “You can’t do both,” declared Boston’s director.

“You should know!” I blurted, remembering Malcolm’s controversial decision to anoint himself as chair of Art of Europe, when that post was vacated by George Shackelford (who left to become senior deputy director at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth).

Rogers said he took on that double-duty because the Boston trustees had ordered him to cut $1 million from his budget. Temporarily eliminating a high-salaried position helped towards that goal. (About two years later, curator Frederick Ilchman was promoted to become the new chair of Art of Europe.)

Throughout our conversation, I was surprised by Rogers’ unfiltered candor. But any doubts I may have had about whether his comments were on-the-record were dispelled at the end, when he asked me not to report one small detail about what he had shared—a request that I have honored.

As I listened to Rogers’ five-minute, no-apologies valedictory address (which you can hear in the CultureGrrl Video, below), I couldn’t help but think of another controversial, long-serving director—the Brooklyn Museum’s Arnold Lehman, also retiring in August. (I should ask what his plans are!)

In both cases, a populist bent often put the directors in direct conflict with traditionalists (including some of their own curators, when professional staffs were dramatically restructured). Yet both survived and thrived, doing an I-told-you-so victory lap during their final months behind the wheel.

In addition to allowing the New York scribe tribe to bid farewell to its director, the BMFA was touting (via an intriguing slide presentation) its latest candidate for blockbuster status—Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, organized by senior curator Ronni Baer (whom you’ll see briefly at the end of my video).

Come join me now as Malcolm Rogers mischievously takes full ownership of his cringe-worthy controversies, including his out-of-the-gate Herb Ritts fashion-photography show, mounted, in his own words, “to break the brand” (and being provocatively reprised now, giving him one last chance to thumb his nose at the critics). He justifiably crows about what he regards as his crowning achievement—the Norman Foster-designed Art of the Americas Wing: