by Jon Lackman | 8 December 2011 | Museums
A variety of pluripotentates (not a word, but should be) have changed jobs recently. Among them:
Gary Tinterow is the new director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which has the third largest art-museum endowment in the U.S. The Houston Chronicle welcomed the appointment:
Known as a scholar, Tinterow also has a flair for showmanship. Among the dozens of exhibits he organized are many of the Met’s best-attended shows ever, blockbusters like Degas (1988) and Kara Walker at the Met: After the Deluge (2006). Last year, his Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art drew an astonishing 700,000 visitors.
Nicolas Bourriaud has been elected to lead the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. The controversial appointment rankled in part because he is a writer/curator rather than an artist, and also because his focus on contemporary art makes some worry he won’t look after the institution’s collections of Old Masters. The Art Media Agency writes (in quirky English):
Even before his nomination Nicolas Bourriaud was in the centre of debates. First of all, he should face a general strike by school instructors should he be elected. This rumour, which was quickly refuted, reflects however the atmosphere of the nomination. Then, after a publication in Journal des Arts, which stated that chairman post had already been reserved for Nicolas Bourriaud by the Minister of Culture, he had to defend himself and send a letter to art historian André Rouillé: “contrary to the fiction published by Journal des Arts, the post of the new director was never engaged to me by the minister who was the first to be surprised. He might have proposed Jean de Loisy but not me. I would like to ask you to change this untruthful statement”
