Fort Worth's Kimbell Art Museum picks Ohio leader to be new director
By Gaile Robinson© Star-Telegram.com, January 16, 2009
Eric McCauley Lee, the 42-year-old director of the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, has been selected to become the new director of the Kimbell Art Museum.
Lee, who holds degrees in art history from Yale University, will become the fourth director in the 36-year history of the Kimbell, succeeding Timothy Potts, who resigned in 2007.
"He’s both a scholar and an administrator, and that is not easy to find," said Kay Fortson, president of the Kimbell’s board of directors.
"His expertise is European art. He did his dissertation on Titian, and we have a Titian," she said. "He’s an experienced director, and we wanted someone with at least 10 years’ experience."
Before joining the Taft Museum in 2007, he was director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma in Norman for almost a decade, where he supervised the construction of a wing designed by Hugh Newell Jacobsen.
In Fort Worth, Lee will oversee an expansion at the Kimbell that will add a building designed by architect Renzo Piano to the museum’s Louis Kahn vaulted galleries.
"It’s a dream job," Lee said, speaking by phone from his office at the Taft. "The irony of it is I’ve always idolized Louis Kahn," he said. "His buildings and his museum at Yale shaped my feelings about architecture, and the Kimbell is his greatest."
Lee, a North Carolina native, said he first visited the Kimbell years ago when he rented a car during a layover at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport to drive to the museum.
"Upon entering I had this odd feeling that I had been there many times before," he said. "Since that first time, I have visited often. There is even a photo on my desk of my son who is now 6 years old standing in front of the building among all those yaupon hollies."
Lee said he knew instinctively that Kahn wanted visitors to enter from the lawn side of the building, and he says he has always done just that. This front-door awareness has made him especially sensitive to the new Renzo Piano design for the Kimbell’s expansion, set to break ground next year, he said.
"I’m very happy the new building’s focus is on the main entrance. I think it is going to enhance the intimate experience one has when visiting the Kimbell," Lee said. "The new building is a wonderful challenge. Renzo is going to have to be extraordinarily sensitive to the original building, and yet it’s important that Renzo’s be a strong building in and of itself."
Fifteen American art museums are searching for directors, including the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Fortson said she talked to numerous museum directors, primarily for references, and the search led her around the world. But it was Naree Viner, with the Gary Kaplan & Associates executive recruiting firm, who steered Lee into Fortson’s sights. Viner says Lee had the management experience, the scholarship and something she calls the "X factor. Understanding Texas."
"The director has to understand the unique nature of Texas and the relationship the museum has with this community. Eric got it," Viner said. "I was convinced he was the right person for the job. I must have approached 50 to 60 people, interviewed two dozen, and of those, presented four for consideration."
In addition to meeting the Kimbell’s professional requirements, Lee passed the social skills test.
"He makes a wonderful impression in meetings," Fortson said. "In three to five years, he’ll be one of the top museum directors in the nation. He’s a coming star."
Duncan Robinson, master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University, knew Lee when he was a teaching assistant and Robinson was director of the Yale Center for British Art. "While I knew him best at the earliest stages of his career, it was clear to me then he had a bright future," Robinson said. "He could have gone a straight academic track but from an early age showed a marked preference for a museum career. I think the Kimbell will soon realize what a good choice they have made."
Lee says supervising the new building efforts and acquiring major works of art are his primary mandates. Finding artworks that are Kimbell-caliber is not easy, although the economic free-fall might shake some rarities out of the penthouses.
Acquisitions of old European artworks will be a new shopping experience for Lee. The Taft, a family home and art collection often compared to New York’s Frick Collection and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, is a lovely repository, but not an acquiring institution.
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art has a collection that’s similar in nature but not stature to the Amon Carter’s, long on American art and photography. So getting to shop for Renaissance masterworks should prove a challenge as well as a thrill.
"I’ve got lots of ideas I want to explore," Lee said. "First I want to get to know the museum backward and forward, and I want to think of what we can do with the acquisitions made over the last couple of years. I can’t wait to get started."
When Fortson was asked when Lee is expected to begin, she had a ready and specific answer: "March 23."
Told of this exchange, Lee responded: "March 23? I’ll be there."
The job Lee will be the Kimbell’s fourth director.
Primary mandates: supervising the new building efforts and acquiring major works.
"He’s a coming star."
