The Brooklyn Museum, Still Seeking a Leader
Art circles are buzzing about who will succeed Arnold Lehman,
who retires this year
‘No Woman, No Cry’ and the ‘The Holy Virgin Mary’ were part of the solo exhibition, ‘Chris Ofili: Night and Day,’ which opened last fall at the New Museum in Manhattan. ‘The Holy Virgin Mary,’ which incorporates elephant dung, drew harsh criticism from then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani when it was included in a 1999 show at the Brooklyn Museum. PHOTO: STEVE REMICH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
As Arnold Lehman prepares to step down this year after 18 years at the helm of the Brooklyn Museum, speculation over who will succeed him has become something of a parlor game in New York art circles.
Will the museum find a director who—unlike most who hold the job nationally—reflects the borough’s cultural diversity? Will he or she share Mr. Lehman’s famously populist sensibilities?
“I am told everyone in the world wanted this job,” said Alan Fishman, chairman of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, who has known Mr. Lehman since the Brooklyn-born director returned to the borough in 1997.
In his time at the museum, he set plenty of tongues wagging—whether by battling with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani over free speech or mounting sometimes controversial shows on subjects ranging from “Star Wars” to “The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe.”
Mr. Lehman announced last September that he would retire in mid-2015. The museum has yet to name a successor.
‘I have yet to discover what is negative about populism.’
—Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold Lehman
Whoever is selected will inherit an institution whose endowment roughly tripled during Mr. Lehman’s tenure, to $123 million. The museum’s annual operating budget has more than doubled, to $35 million, and its audience is both young—with a median age of 34—and diverse.
Nonwhites accounted for 24% of visitors to art museum and galleries in 2012, according to survey data from the National Endowment for the Arts. By contrast, more than 40% of Brooklyn Museum visitors identified themselves as people of color, according to the museum.
But his successor must also compete with prominent Manhattan museums both for donors and for curatorial talent. A key challenge: balancing exhibitions that pack in the crowds with the museum’s historic role as an encyclopedic museum with a collection that encompasses everything from Egyptian antiquities to edgy work by contemporary artists such as Kara Walker.
Arnold Lehman ENLARGE
Arnold Lehman PHOTO: MIREYA ACIERTO/GETTY IMAGES
“The challenge…for this new director is to be careful not to be trendy, to listen to your curators, and to not be guided by what is hip,” said Kinshasha Holman Conwill, deputy director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, scheduled to open in Washington, D.C., in 2015.
Last year, the museum drew more than 545,000 visitors, up from an average year-end attendance of 382,000 over the three years between 1999 and 2001. The growth has been fueled, in part, by expanded education programs and initiatives like Target First Saturdays, monthly events where admission is waived after 5 p.m. and visitors can roam the galleries or take in free music and lectures.
Chairwoman Elizabeth Sackler said that the museum was continuing on an upward trajectory, and served as a hub for art and education that also has the world’s only center for feminist art (which she endowed).
“The museum under Arnold’s tenure was already thinking big,” Ms. Sackler said in an email. “We are now positioned to be more expansive.”
From ‘Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe’ ENLARGE
From ‘Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe’ PHOTO: JASON ANDREW FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The museum’s home borough, now experiencing a cultural renaissance, is a very different place than when Mr. Lehman took the job. Neighborhoods like Fort Greene and Boerum Hill—now known for their pricey brownstones—were back then still considered remote, gritty outposts by many Manhattanites.
Mr. Lehman banded together with the heads of other local cultural groups to promote their offerings, and persuaded them to focus on local audiences instead of luring visitors from Manhattan, according to Evan Kingsley, an arts and nonprofit consultant who previously held posts at the Brooklyn Public Library and the Prospect Park Alliance.
Most of Mr. Lehman’s peers have since moved on. Next month, Karen Brooks Hopkins is stepping down from her longtime post as president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. New leaders are in place at Brooklyn Public Library, the Prospect Park Alliance and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
“Arnold piloted the museum through very challenging waters,” said Maxwell Anderson, director of the Dallas Museum of Art and a former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. “It has emerged as an anchoring institution in one of the most vibrant communities in the U.S.”
The journey wasn’t without incident. There was the uproar in 1999 over the R-rated “Sensation” exhibit, which included a portrait of the Virgin Mary by artist Chris Ofili that incorporated elephant dung, prompting then-Mayor Giuliani to threaten to cut off the museum’s city funding.
Mr. Lehman also drew fire from critics who questioned whether efforts to expand attendance came at the expense of serious scholarship. In 2004 the late Hilton Kramer wrote that Mr. Lehman had turned “the museum into a kind of indoor theme park or mall” and accused him of “pandering to lowbrow tastes.”
In the mid-2000s, a reorganization of the curatorial department ruffled feathers among those who felt the change de-emphasized the importance of the museum’s permanent collection.
Mr. Lehman said in an email “I have yet to discover what is negative about populism,” adding that the museum has been a leader “in its engagement with its rich and vast permanent collection.”
Others defend Mr. Lehman’s record, which also includes well-reviewed shows such as a 2014 exhibition on the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
“He needs attendance to propel the institution forward,” said Linda Johnson, president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Public Library.
The idea that museums should be inclusive places is also gaining wider favor at a time when national arts participation is on the decline. Earlier this year, the Wallace Foundation, a New York City-based organization supporting arts and education, announced a $52 million effort to help arts groups expand their audiences, in part, by boosting audience diversity.
“Arnold knows that what you have up on the walls has a direct impact and correlation to who is walking through those galleries,” said New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer of Queens, who chairs the cultural affairs committee. “It’s one of the premiere cultural institutions in the city and Arnold has brought it to that place.”
Write to Jennifer Smith at jennifer.smith@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications:
The Brooklyn Museum holds monthly events called Target First Saturdays. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the events were called First Saturdays. (May 15, 2015)
