Arts Breaking News: Tacoma Art Museum Chief Curator Leaving
Patricia McDonnell, who was responsible for the Great American Thing exhibition that was splashed across metro buses all winter, is leaving the Tacoma Art Museum.
“The terms of her departure are under negotiation,” museum board president Judith Nilan said, when asked when and why McDonnell is taking off.
McDonnell is a serious-minded scholar who came to the museum in 2002, shortly before it opened its Antoine Predock-designed building. I’ve enjoyed the way the museum’s identity has been forged from the tension between her more traditionalist, historically driven style and fellow curator Rock Hushka’s contemporary, regional connectedness. Occasionally, I’ve found her presentations stiff, as I did with Great American Thing, but I also appreciated her dedication to the field and often found her a knowledgeable and approachable resource.
Board president Nilan said she expects the museum will do a national search to fill the position, but that she doesn’t know for sure: that’s something director Stephanie Stebich and the board will decide together, she said.
TAM’s modern curatorial history also includes: Barbara Johns (whose work I only saw briefly when I arrived in this area and just before she left the job in 1999—but which people continue to rave about) and Greg Bell (an ardent regionalist and an artist himself, now director of Gallery 4Culture, which has had some great shows lately).
I’ll watch with great interest to see who shows up next. TAM is a terrific regional museum: both rooted, and ambitious. It needs special curators.
So the first thing Jen recalls about the departing curator's last show was that it was "splashed across metro buses all winter." Sigh.
I love the historical shows TAM has put on in recent years, and I hope they don't forsake them to focus on the contemporary, political (as in left-wing political) shows. What's next after the "exhibition on how visual art has shaped the dialogue about AIDS," an exhibition on how artists coped with eight oppressive years of the Bush regime?