Forget the Musty Cliches

Not long ago, a veteran art museum director had an epiphany about the state of his profession. Arriving at a meeting of the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, he spotted his colleagues from a distance. He was looking at some of America’s most highly revered and well-seasoned cultural leaders, but what he saw was a group of overweight, out-of-shape, gray-haired men in rumpled business suits.

Ann Philbin, the director of the Drawing Center in New York, who on Jan. 11 will succeed Henry T. Hopkins as director of the UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, doesn’t fit the mold. For one thing, she’s not a man. Although women are plentiful in the ranks of arts administration and many have risen to the top of community organizations, only four lead major U.S. art museums: Andrea Rich at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Anne d’Harnoncourt at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kathy Halbreich at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Mary Gardner Gates at the Seattle Art Museum.

At the helm of somewhat less prominent, but still prestigious institutions are Vishakha Desai of the Asia Society Galleries in New York (the current president of the art museum directors association); Sherri Geldin of the Ohio State University Wexner Art Center in Columbus, Ohio; Emily Sano at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; and now Philbin.

At 46, Philbin is also younger than the stereotypical museum director--not to mention that she’s slim, stylish and blessed with a thick mane of reddish-brown hair. But if she doesn’t come from museum directors’ central casting, she is very much of the art world. Credited with transforming the Drawing Center, a nonprofit gallery in SoHo, from a moribund organization to an adventurous showcase for drawing and a vibrant community forum, she will arrive in Los Angeles with an impressive resume and a wealth of experience, amid high hopes that she is the right person to lead the UCLA/Hammer Museum into its next phase.

“I think she’ll be an incredible asset,” said Lari Pittman, a nationally renowned, Los Angeles-based artist who has known Philbin for 10 years and who encouraged her to take the UCLA/Hammer position.

“At the Drawing Center, she turned a dingy, uninteresting space into one of the preeminent locations in Manhattan to visit. People who don’t usually have much to do with each other--artists, curators and collectors--all go there. She brought all these constituencies under one roof, to a place that is bright and attractive, both physically and conceptually,” he said.

Rushing out of the Drawing Center to talk to a reporter on a chilly day in November, striding through the colorful neighborhood to a nearby Philippine restaurant and settling into a booth for lunch and a chat, Philbin appeared to be the personification of creative energy. Asking questions about the city that will soon be her home, as well as the museum she will lead, she was as much interviewer as interviewee.

“What do you think of ‘Sunshine & Noir?’ ” she asked, referring to the current exhibition at the UCLA/Hammer Museum. She also had questions about everything from to the museum’s bookstore and rental gallery to the West Hollywood neighborhood where she has rented a house.

“Could the entrance of the museum be changed?” she queried, delving into peculiarities of the bunker-like building and possible ways of making it more friendly to art and visitors. Attached to Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s high-rise headquarters in Westwood, the museum has a notoriously confusing access route, via elevators from the subterranean parking structure that deliver visitors to the ground level but leave them wondering where the museum entrance is.

In coming to Los Angeles, Philbin will take charge of a young institution that was born amid controversy. Founded in 1988, when Occidental Chairman Armand Hammer broke a 17-year promise to donate the bulk of his art collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and declared his intention to build his own museum, it has evolved into a respectable institution under UCLA’s management and Hopkins’ direction. But functioning mainly as a host of traveling exhibitions, the museum has yet to develop a distinctive identity and the building is still unfinished.

“Henry has made a wonderful foundation for me to take off on, but it doesn’t have to be like a rocket. It can be a process,” Philbin said. Emphasizing the museum’s potential, she declined to make grand pronouncements about her plans before settling in and getting to know both the institution and the community.

The exhibition program has been set for the next two years, so her curatorial input won’t be seen for a while, except in cases where she can “slip things in,” she said. But her eight-year tenure at the Drawing Center offers some clues.

While there--in an institution that concentrates on works on paper but stretches traditional definitions of drawing--Philbin has introduced many new artists and organized exhibitions of historic material, including works by Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso and Rembrandt. Among her most adventurous and best-known exhibitions are “Pierced Hearts and True Love,” a show of tattoo drawings, and “Cadavre Equis,” for which 1,200 artists executed parts of collaborative drawings, in a new version of a Surrealist parlor game.

Philbin said one of her first priorities at the UCLA/Hammer Museum is to “rethink the whole space.” It’s important to finish the auditorium, so that it can be used for programs that will draw a broad audience, she said. Another item high on her agenda is the development of a flexible “project space” that could be adapted to many different kinds of contemporary art.

She also plans to investigate ways to open up or expand the museum’s traditional galleries on the second floor, and she will look into the possibility of moving the bookstore to the street floor, where it would be more inviting to passers-by. But changes in the building will require many consultations and fund-raising, and that will take time, she said.

While contemplating long-range projects that may or may not happen, she also expressed definite ideas about a few things she expects to evolve more quickly.

“I want to draw on the resources of UCLA, its involvement with public art, its libraries and its collections,” she said. One anticipated result is a partnership with the UCLA film archive that she expects to present a lively program at the museum.

She also plans to build a strong relationship with L.A.’s artists. “I want the contemporary art community and emerging artists to be more involved in the museum,” she said. “They should have a presence all the time.” Although the exhibition program will probably continue to touch on a wide range of history and geography, contemporary art should be a constant component of the museum’s program, she said. To help make that a reality, she is likely to form an artists advisory committee, and she likes the idea of having an artist on the curatorial team.

These ideas reveal one of Philbin’s strong points, Pittman said. “In all the talk about building broader audiences, it is often forgotten that artists are an important part of that audience. Annie sends the message that artists are important. She’s an artist-identified curator, and that gives her access to artists that few curators have,” he said.

Philbin said she wants the museum’s program and identity to respond to the community’s needs. “Ideas came to us at the Drawing Center,” she said. “People needed a space for programs and we provided that space, so it became a sort of town center for SoHo.” However the UCLA/Hammer Museum may differ from the Drawing Center, she hopes it will become a magnet for the community as well.

As might be expected, Philbin is giving a lot of thought to the future of the museum. But she is also aware of its troubled history.

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Even as construction of the building began, critics contended that Hammer’s eclectic collection of paintings, an illustrated manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci and a large holding of prints, drawings, paintings and sculptures by 19th century French caricaturist Honore Daumier didn’t merit a separate museum. Occidental’s financing of the building--including an endowment that has grown to $33 million--sparked shareholder lawsuits that were settled shortly before the museum’s opening and Hammer’s death in 1990.

“I hope that any residue of bad feelings about Dr. Hammer’s establishment of the museum can be laid to rest, so that we can build on Henry’s legacy and the museum can reach its potential,” Philbin said.

The museum seemed to be adrift until 1994, when UCLA assumed management and programming. But then another controversy arose, over the sale of one of the museum’s most valuable assets, the Leonardo manuscript.

Known as the Codex Leicester since 1717, and renamed the Codex Hammer in 1980, when Hammer purchased it for $5.6 million with Occidental funds, the manuscript was sold at auction in 1994 for $30.8 million to Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp. Proceeds from the sale provided a reserve fund for a period of eight years, to pay off pending lawsuits and resolve tax disputes.

In 2002, interest accrued on the fund will be used for art acquisitions, in accordance with ethical standards established by the American Assn. of Museums. Remaining capital also can be used for acquisitions, but most of the money probably will form a new endowment--in addition to the museum’s existing endowment of $33 million from Occidental. Half the interest earned from the new endowment will be used for exhibitions; the other half will be spent on programs, operations or acquisitions, at the discretion of the board of trustees.

Many questions remain as to the size of the new endowment and how it should be used, but it will certainly enrich the museum. At this point, however, the museum’s financial fortune is just one aspect of the institution that is in a state of evolution.

Philbin not only is taking on a professional challenge in moving to Los Angeles, she is uprooting herself from the East Coast, where she has spent her entire life. Born in Boston, she grew up near Washington, where her father was an attorney in the Kennedy administration.

Philbin earned her B.A. in art history and painting at the University of New Hampshire in 1976 and her M.A in museum studies and arts administration at New York University in 1981. She began her career as a researcher at the Frick Art Reference Library, then worked on curatorial projects at Artists Space and the New Museum in New York. She was curator of the Ian Woodner family collection of Old Master drawings from 1980-82, but then moved into the commercial sphere, directing the Grace Borgenicht Gallery from 1982-84 and the Curt Marcus Gallery from 1984-87.

Dissatisfied with being a dealer, she returned to curatorial work. Before joining the Drawing Center in 1990, she organized a benefit exhibition of contemporary art for the National Abortion Rights Action League, a public art show at the World Financial Center and a nationwide benefit for the American Foundation for AIDS.

She loved her work at the Drawing Center, but after eight years it was time to think about making a change. There were opportunities in New York, but nothing that seemed like the right move for a person at her achievement level, so she began to consider other places. That left only one possibility. “Los Angeles is the only other city that offers what I need,” she said.