The New Guard

Olga Viso also has a reputation for doing “challenging” and sometimes “daring” shows that garner as much respect from academics as they do praise from the public. At the Hirshhorn in 2004, for example, she curated an exhibit of Cuban-American performance artist, filmmaker, and sculptor Ana Mendieta, who, in the 1970s, was one of the first artists to use her own body to explore issues of gender and identity, and who was fond of using blood for its symbolic shock effect. In one piece called Body Tracks, Mendieta filmed herself dipping her hands in a mixture of red paint and blood and smearing it on a canvas, an act of organic rebellion that seems almost quaint in comparison to what other artists have done with their bodies since then, but which—in the context of a Smithsonian building—was rather bold, considering the United States’ unfortunate and ongoing legacy at Guantanamo Bay.

Her willingness to take such risks is one reason Viso is known as an “artist’s director”—one who understands artists, believes in them, trusts their judgment, and supports them in any way she can. Those who criticized Halbreich’s regime may not find Viso’s sensibilities any more appealing, but those who value the Walker’s ability to continually perplex and surprise may rest assured that Viso is no stranger to the bizarre, head-scratching sorts of contemporary art that found its way here during the Halbreich era. In fact, Viso has had a hand in some of those exhibits. As far back as 2000, Viso helped organize the renowned retrospective of Robert Gober for its installation at the 2001 Venice Biennale. Regular Walker-goers may remember the Gober show: It was the one that included a fixtureless kitchen sink mounted on the wall, a child’s playpen arranged into an “X,” and the most notorious piece of all: a rendering of two three-foot-long sticks of butter called Sex.

“Choosing Olga is more of an evolution than a revolution,” says Walker board member Peel. “The long-range goal of the Walker is to create a pioneering twenty-first-century multidisciplinary arts center, and Olga Viso is someone whom we think can take the Walker to the next level of greatness.”

Like Viso, Kaywin Feldman was also the “unanimous choice” of the selection committee, which was headed by MIA board chairman Brian Palmer, who also headed the committee that chose outgoing director and president William Griswold, who is leaving to become director of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Griswold’s primary contribution to the MIA was completing a $100 million capital campaign and guiding the museum through an expansion and renovation that included thirty-four new galleries, as well as a new classroom, an art library, and some public archives of prints and photographs. Though no one anticipated that Griswold would leave after only two years, Palmer says the rigorous process the board went through in hiring Griswold made the search for a successor much easier.

“We spent quite a bit of time establishing criteria for Bill,” says Palmer, “and after examining those criteria again, we found that we were looking for the same type of individual. Our priorities have not changed.”

Chief among those priorities, says Palmer, is raising the artistic stature of the museum and building stronger ties to the community: “Our top priority was hiring someone with excellent artistic credentials—as opposed to a business director. Our financial house is in very good order, so we felt we needed someone who could instill a great deal of enthusiasm in the curatorial staff, as well as someone the curators could respect. It also had to be someone who could talk intelligently to collectors and build those relationships, because it’s so difficult to go into the art market and buy right now.” The MIA’s yearly acquisition budget is a little over $5.5 million, for example, but rich collectors are driving prices for individual pieces up into the tens of millions of dollars. For museums, the only hope they have of sharing these pricey works of art with the public is through gifts or loans from the collectors themselves.

Feldman’s star has risen in the arts management world because she took over a struggling museum in Memphis and transformed it into the cultural center of the city. In so doing, she also built lasting relationships with the city’s African-American community, which accounts for 60 percent of the population of Memphis. During Feldman’s tenure, the Brooks’s membership tripled, attendance rose 35 percent, and she significantly expanded the permanent collection, notably by investing in the work of many Tennessee artists, particularly African-Americans.

“The Brooks was a museum that was forgotten by its community,” says Brian Palmer, “and Kaywin Feldman turned it completely around.” One notable example of Feldman’s ingenuity was a show put together around the acquisition of 220 photos from the Memphis World, an African-American newspaper published between 1940 and 1970, when “white” papers didn’t publish photos of African-Americans. That kind of resourcefulness endeared Feldman to Memphis’s African-American community and earned her a great deal of respect in the city at large. Perhaps the greatest praise for her abilities may have come from Mike Fryt, president of the Brooks board of trustees. After announcing Feldman’s departure, Fryt told reporters that the museum’s succession plan was “. . . we are looking for another Kaywin Feldman.”

What’s Feldman’s secret? One look at the Brooks’s programming over the past few years suggests she has both a commitment to serious art and a serious commitment to—for want of a better word—fun. Last year, the Brooks developed a program for Elvis week called All Shook Up at the same time it was screening a documentary on Nazi art destruction. In honor of the screening of Whole Hog, a documentary on Tennessee barbecue culture, the museum hosted an outdoor barbecue featuring some of the cooks in the film.

“It’s important for museums—particularly encyclopedic museums like the Brooks and the MIA—to be accessible to all kinds of people,” says Feldman. “I also think it’s important for museums to relax sometimes and bring art down out of the clouds. Why shouldn’t people have fun at a museum?”

Though she obviously has a populist streak, it’s Feldman’s commitment to art, her reputation as a scholar, and her successful managerial experience that got her the job, says Palmer. “Kaywin is young, but she’s had more museum director experience at forty-one than almost anyone in the country. She also had exceptional references. We talked to people from her days in Fresno who said they respected her so much that if they had the opportunity, they’d go anywhere to work for her. You don’t hear that very often.”