Director James Cuno

I was as surprised as everyone else by Director Cuno's sudden resignation last month.(especially since I didn't read about it until today)

His predecessor, James Wood, held the position for 25 years, and when coming aboard, Mr. Cuno wrote about this being a destination position in his profession. Where does one go after being the director of the AIC? The Met?

But, as it turns out, the President and CEO of the Getty Trust is actually a juicier plum. For one thing it pays more. His first year, he'll make 1.4 million instead of the 870 thousand he got at the AIC. For another, he's relieved of all the bothersome responsibilities of a museum director. With its 3 billion dollar endowment, the Getty won't need him to do fund raising, and it won't even need him to oversee the operation of a museum. Instead, he will direct the overall operation that includes research and scholarship as well as museum operation.

And more than an institutional director, Mr. Cuno is something of a scholar, and an outspoken advocate of the encyclopedic museum and its mission to display original artifacts from every time and place, regardless of how they were originally removed.

So yes, the Getty position will be a better fit for him.

What is his legacy at the A.I.C. ?

He was there when the Modern Wing opened, but that was really the project of the previous administration.

His primary bent as director seems to have been populist -- i.e. appealing to a broader public by emphasizing family programming. Though, on the other hand, he also eliminated the "pay what you wish" admissions fee that basically locks out that vast public which subsists on chump-change wages or social security income.

(BTW - that would have locked me out of the museum during my first decade in Chicago when basically I was living hand to mouth)

He also has emphasized the permanent collection - including all the stuff that's usually off-view - rather than the blockbuster exhibits. Not a single, specially ticketed exhibition has occurred during his 7 years. But there were several good shows made from things hardly ever seen: the tapestries , Japanese screens , and the Soviet War Posters

Regarding the re-installation of the non-European galleries after the Modern Wing opened up all that new space, it has mostly been disappointing.

The Alsdorf galleries of South Asia sculpture are poorly lit, and the new galleries of African and pre-European American work seem to have been designed for a museum of natural history.

Most painful of all, the gallery space for Chinese art has been reduced to accommodate a major donor of Japanese material - and the re-design of the Japanese galleries has replaced the spiritual with the clinical.

Regarding the modern wing, the good news is that several rooms are now dedicated to rotating displays of local artists.

While the bad news is that everything that's not contemporary academic is still locked out. No traditional landscapes, figures, or portraits -- even if such things continue to have a broader public appeal than either minimalism or conceptual mind play.

And the institutional policy of secrecy remains intact -- despite a national trend for transparency, led by the director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, just three hours down the road.

With that closed-door policy in force, and with the absence of serious art journalism in our local papers, it's impossible for outsiders like myself to evaluate this director's brief tenure.

One can't even evaluate the acquisitions made in his administration because they aren't listed anywhere. The most notable one was the Malevich . That one looks much better in reproduction than in person and some very good paintings were auctioned off to help pay for it.

(By the way, in that last link, I concluded with the assertion that "Each and every museum curator and administrator would be gone in a New York minute when or if they were offered a better job elsewhere.")

It may just be that vested interests within both the departments and the boardroom are running the museum, anyway, and the director is little more than a figurehead.


But if it actually is an important position, what should the Art Institute of Chicago be looking for in the next director?

Good management and fund raising skills are obviously required.

But what about a sense of taste?

Is it too much to ask that the director of an art museum actually love to look at art and be able to make sharp distinctions concerning the visual quality of objects and how they are presented?

I don't recall that James Cuno ever expressed enthusiasm about how things look.

His predecessor, James Wood, was clearly a fan of Ellsworth Kelly. But an interest in minimalism is rather minimally an interest in the visual qualities of art.

Even if it's outside the theory and practice of contemporary academic art, shouldn't one of the missions of an art museum be to get the best looking things and show them to the best advantage?