Saturday, March 06, 1999
Art museum director to resign at end of year
BY OWEN FINDSEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati Art Museum director and chief executive officer Barbara K. Gibbs has announced her resignation, effective at the end of the year.
“We're going back to Portland, Oregon, where I started my career at the Portland Art Association,” Ms. Gibbs said Friday. “We have lots of ties there, and the place has a lot of meaning for us.”
She has no plans to continue her career in the museum business. “I'm actually thinking about doing other things,” she said.
“When the Jackson Pollock exhibition was going on in New York last year, I was too busy here to go and see it. I started thinking that I wasn't able to do the kinds of things I got into this business for.”
The museum's board of trustees will form a search committee to seek her replacement.
Ms. Gibbs became the sixth director of the 118-year-old museum — one of the country's oldest visual art institutions — in 1994. Under her direction, a 30,000-square-foot collection storage and curatorial facility was created. Its budget has gone from a $1 million deficit to a $800,000 operating fund balance. The annual income increased nearly 50 percent. Membership reached 13,500, with an 85 percent membership renewal rate.
The Cincinnati Art Museum developed several nationally touring exhibitions during her tenure, including Avant Garde by the Yard; Singing the Clay; and Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt. The museum also premiered the exhibition British Elegance; Decorative Arts from Burghley House. Major works by artists including Paul Gauguin, Jim Dine, Frank Stella, Julian Schnabel and Benjamin West were added to the collection.
“I have a lot of respect for Barbara, and I'm sure she will succeed in whatever she chooses to do,” said Contemporary Arts Center Director Charles Desmarais.
Ms. Gibbs said she will stay on to help the trustees during the search process for a new director. Although her resignation is not effective until the last day of 1999, she is expecting to end her stay in Cincinnati within the next six months so her son Alex can start sixth grade in Portland.
Before coming to Cincinnati, Ms. Gibbs served as director of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, Calif.. and deputy director in Portland.
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