The single most moving experience I’ve had at the Ulrich (Museum of Art) happened during our recent exhibition of the photographs of incarcerated children by photographer Richard Ross. We had a comment book in the gallery, and also staffed the gallery with a social worker during evening and weekend hours. A mother of three boys wrote in the book about her visit with her youngest son. She stated that her two oldest boys were in prison, and it was her hope that seeing our exhibition would help her youngest son make better choices in his life. Our new tagline at the Ulrich is “today’s art matters.” I can’t think of a more poignant illustration of those words.
I remember my first class field trip to the Wichita Art Museum when I was in elementary school. There is a real power in the expressive impact of great works of arts, and I was fortunate to see great art at an impressionable moment. WAM has a gem of a collection of American art, and that is the art that has always appealed to me the most. Academically, I know more about 19th century landscape painting that any other area, but I thoroughly enjoy contemporary art. Liz and I have been fortunate to be able to collect some over the years, and that has proven to be one of our joys as a couple.
I’d love to see a greatly expanded McKnight Art Center building that joins the programs and collections of the Ulrich with the dynamic teaching of the School of Art, Design, and Creative Industries. We have the concept. We just need to find $30 million to make it reality.
I’m excited by the vision of our university leadership, and the commitment and determination of the WSU Foundation. The Ulrich and the School of Art, Design, and Creative Industries have key roles to play in the growth of WSU as envisioned by President Bardo and his team.
I’ve been blessed with a wide range of educational opportunities throughout my career. I have my BA in art history from WSU, and an MA in art history and Certificate of Museum Studies from Boston University. I’ve been a participant in organized training, such as Museum Management Institute, a program of the Getty Trust that was four weeks of intensive leadership training at the University of California, Berkeley. And just this past summer I attended an academic museum directors’ institute at the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University.
While I create very little now, I know that the life of an artist would have been fulfilling. Can you imagine how magical it must have been to work in some drafty abbey in France centuries ago illustrating manuscripts?
My favorite food is comfort food, definitely. I make a pretty good shepherd’s pie and chicken pot pie. My fancy dish is a cross between Burgundy Beef and Coq au Vin — baked chicken with a really rich red wine sauce. Perhaps the cold weather is affecting my answer — that or the fact it’s about lunch time.
We are in the process of photographing every work of art in the permanent collection of the museum. That’s over 6,500 images that are now being taken, manipulated for data storage, eventually to be accessible through a web-based searchable platform by anyone worldwide. We have two or three years of work ahead of us, but once completed, we can truly make the collection of the Ulrich a teaching resource in all areas of academic study and creative expression. I’m proud of my team at the museum for pulling together to make this happen — and a huge thanks to the visionary members of our community who are underwriting these efforts.
How can you not be a fan of WuShock? It’s the personification of our history, first and foremost. And it’s the homegrown symbol of Wichita for me. While I never thought much about our agrarian roots as a kid growing up here in Wichita, all you have to do is drive by the old grain elevators on the Northside to understand how important farming — and wheat — have been, and continue to be, to our place as a community. And I think it’s fun to have a mascot that not’s so obvious; WuShock is a bit like a private joke, and I think that’s pretty special.
The best learning experiences for me as a museum professional have come through my volunteer work for The Fund for Arts and Culture in Eastern and Central Europe, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C. Over a 20-year period, 100s of seminars were given by U.S. fine arts professionals for our former Soviet Union counterparts, to assist them in the transition from State-controlled to free-market arts organizations. My area was audience engagement, and I had the privilege to conduct seminars in Bulgaria, Romania and in south-central Siberia, Russian. These were extraordinary experiences working with dedicated, determined peers who faced enormous challenges. It helped me better appreciate our own arts situation in the United States.
There aren’t many of us who’ve had the honor of being a founding director of two institutions. I served in that role for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and also at the Flint Hills Discovery Center in Manhattan, Kan. While one effort helped launch an arts institution with potentially limitless opportunity for regional and national impact, the other brings long-overdue awareness to one of the most important bioregions on this planet — the Flint Hills and its tallgrass prairie. As a fifth-generation Kansan, I would say helping successfully launch the Discovery Center is my proudest moment to date.
