LACMA Loses Curator to D.C. Museum

Philip Conisbee, curator of European paintings and sculpture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and one of the most esteemed members of its curatorial staff, has been appointed curator of French paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Conisbee’s departure comes at a particularly sensitive time for the museum, which has been besieged by budgetary cutbacks, staff reductions and a lawsuit by senior curator of drawings Maurice Tuchman, who is seeking reinstatement to his former position as senior curator of 20th-Century Art.

In his new position, Conisbee will once again work for Earl A. (Rusty) Powell III, who in 1988 hired him away from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when Powell was director of LACMA. Powell became director of the National Gallery of Art last summer after a 12-year tenure in Los Angeles.

“We are very pleased,” Powell said of the Conisbee appointment, citing his wealth of knowledge. “I think it’s a good move for Philip and a wonderful opportunity for the County Museum to think about the direction it wants to take in European art. I hope it works for everyone,” Powell said.

“I leave Los Angeles and the museum with a great deal of regret, but this is a great professional opportunity for me, which I couldn’t turn down,” Conisbee said. “My specialty is French painting of the 17th to 19th Century. I have been working for a couple of years on a catalogue of 17th- and 18th-Century French paintings at the National Gallery. This will give me an opportunity to complete my catalogue.”

Conisbee is known for having brought in major acquisitions to the museum, including the recent purchase of Paul Cezanne’s acclaimed “Sous Bois (Under the Trees).” Exhibitions he organized at LACMA include “Monet to Matisse: French Art in Southern California Collections,” shown in 1991.

“I think it will be hard for the County Museum to replace him,” said New York dealer Richard L. Feigen, who specializes in European art and does about 80% of his business with museums. “There aren’t many Philip Conisbees around. He is one of the great curatorial talents in the world.”

“My work in Washington will be narrower in scope, but I will have greater opportunities for scholarship. And in making acquisitions and soliciting gifts, I will be operating on a national scale,” Conisbee said.

Michael Shapiro, who became director of the County Museum last October, expressed regret about the resignation: “While it is always a disappointment to lose a talented member of the museum staff, it is a compliment to the museum’s stature as well as Philip’s professional accomplishments. He has brought great distinction to the museum during his tenure. We applaud his record in terms of exhibitions, acquisitions and publications, and we look forward to working with him in his new position.”

Conisbee’s successor will have “big shoes to fill,” Shapiro said, but despite fiscal hard times, the position will be filled. A search for another curator of European painting and sculpture will begin immediately, he said.

Conisbee, a tall, even-tempered Englishman, is well known in art circles for his scholarly acumen and quietly commanding demeanor. He is so highly revered by his peers at LACMA that he served as the curators’ official representative to the museum’s board of trustees during the transition between the administrations of Powell and Shapiro.

During his five years at the museum, Conisbee supervised the reinstallation of the galleries of European art, organized the “Masterpiece in Focus” series of exhibitions and guided the museum’s acquisitions of European artworks. Among major Old Master works he has secured for the museum, mostly with funds from the Ahmanson Foundation, are paintings by Domenichino, Carl Fabritius and Philippe de Champaigne.

Conisbee also oversaw the addition of two monumental gifts: “The Last Supper,” a late-14th-Century painting by Spanish artist Pedro Berruguete, and “Christ on the Cross With Saints Mark, John the Baptist, Vincent Ferrer and the Blessed Antoninus,” a 15th-Century altarpiece by an Italian painter known as the Master of the Fiesole Epiphany.

Conisbee graduated with honors in the history of European art in 1968 from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and published his Ph.D dissertation on Joseph Vernet in 1976.

Among the most recent of his many publications is “The Ahmanson Gifts: European Masterpieces in the Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.”

Conisbee will remain at LACMA until Sept. 30, after the opening of two exhibitions he has organized, “Freidrich to Hodler: A Romantic Tradition” and “The Golden Age of Danish Painting.”