Marc Mayer
I’ve been quite late getting around to mentioning the Dec. 9 appointment of Marc Mayer, director of Montreal’s Museum of Contemporary Art (and before that, deputy director of the Brooklyn Museum), as the new director of the conflict-ravaged National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, where Mayer hopes to restore peace and harmony after assuming his post on Jan. 19. (Since the beginning of this month, CultureGrrl has been pretty much “all LA MOCA/National Academy, all the time,” dropping the ball on other stories.)
The NY Times has also been quite late picking up this story: Today’s long article by Ian Austen goes into great detail about the place’s shocking dysfunctionality, which came to light half a year ago and was revealed in staff e-mails, filed in court, that apparently were not fit for quotation in a family newspaper.
Happily, Paul Gessell of the Ottawa Citizen, who has been following this drama from the beginning, filed a timely piece Dec. 9 on Mayer’s appointment, focusing on the new director’s optimism going forward, rather than on the institution’s past miseries (which included a nasty dispute between the museum’s outgoing director, Pierre Théberge, and its deputy director, David Franklin).
Gessell reports:
Mr. Mayer said he has never met Mr. Franklin, who retains his job as deputy director, and is “reserving judgment” on this leading expert on Italian Renaissance art. “All I know is he is one of the most gifted curators in the country, and I always give gifted people the benefit of the doubt.”
Sounds like a good start to me. I also enjoyed Mayer’s rollicking From the Director essay on his the Montreal museum’s website. But I particularly liked Marc’s remark reported at the end of Austen’s Times piece:
He added that he would probably make one bureaucratic change fairly soon after taking over.
“I may institute a different kind of approach to business correspondence within the gallery,” he said, laughing.
Laughter is always good medicine. A sense of humor could be just what’s needed to begin dispelling the “toxic” atmosphere described in the flurry of court papers engendered by the Gallery’s in-fighting.
Memo to Jeremy Strick: I hear that Montreal is looking for a new contemporary museum director. Parlez-vous français?