Margit Rankin
  • Artist Trust
  • Margit Rankin
Starting Tuesday, Margit Rankin will take over as executive director of Artist Trust, the leading organization supporting individual artists who work in all disciplines throughout Washington State. (Her predecessor was Fidelma McGinn, now at The Seattle Foundation.)

Rankin's last post, from 2003 to 2007, was as ED at Seattle Arts & Lectures. Before that, she was associate director of UW's Simpson Center for the Humanities. Deeper background: She's originally from Richmond, Virginia, where her family has owned a photographic studio for three generations. She has a Ph.D in comparative literature. Undergrad degree from Yale. Nonprofit leadership studies at Stanford business school. (My goodness.)

One of Rankin's jobs at SAL was to introduce and interview the speakers, and unfortunately, she got pretty bad reviews from two very different writers at The Stranger, who called her "hypperreverent" and "obsequious" and noted that she "reminds me of all the girls who always got As in my IB English class in high school."

I've never met Rankin or heard her talk. We spoke on the phone yesterday for a quick intro interview, and I asked her what she's seeing, what she's reading, and what she thinks about being called hyperreverent. What she's seeing (in art) didn't sound terribly exciting, but what she's reading did. Check her out.

What have you been doing since 2007?

My family has a photographic studio in Virginia, and some properties that I've been managing. I've also been serving on the grants committee of the Washington Women's Foundation. It's basically a collection of women who have a pooled fund and they provide large grants to local nonprofits in five different areas. I got involved when I was at SAL—they invited me to sit on their impact assessment committee (local nonprofit heads are invited to sit on that committee to find out whether their money is doing what they want it to do). They give out almost $500,000 a year. Artist Trust got one of their grants a couple years ago. SAL got one.

How do you plan to branch out from the literary arts and humanities into Artist Trust's broader scope?

I should say I feel like I've been working pretty broadly in the arts for more than a decade. At the Simpson Center, our scope was to fund interdisciplinary projects in the arts and the humanities. I worked with the Symphony, I worked with Intiman, i worked with Seattle Art Museum, I worked with the Henry. Whatever they had going on, we found ways to partner and sort of enliven the intellectual community around it.

What's the last art show you saw?

I went to a couple of things at Winston Wachter Gallery, and if I remember the name now I'm gonna be really lucky, but I can describe the pieces. Who's the artist that does things that are, like, branches that have a metal base and sort of a lucite top? They were eggs in a nest. I remember those that I liked very much.

What was the last performance you saw?

I went to see Don Quixote on Friday, which was a really nice and charming production. It was fun and it just had both humor and sort of that kind of magical performative quality. They used castanets, and the performers shouted—you don't expect the performers at the ballet to be shouting.

Last book you read.

Oh, my god, I'm in three book groups, so I'm always reading about four or five books at a time. Right now, I'm reading ... Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, he's my sort of favorite contemporary author right now. ... I'm also reading a book by Scott Wallace, it's called The Unconquered, and it's about these uncontacted tribes in the Amazon.

Tell me about the studio in Virginia.

My grandfather founded a photographic studio that he actually took over from the chap who mentored him, so it's actually a third-generation studio, and it merged with another of my grandfather's colleagues, so it has archives going back to 1884. It's been in business for a long time in my family, and I am the nonphotographic child, but it's just sort of happened that it's ended up under my purview; my mother's a little over 80 now.

Is it still operating? As in, you go there and have your picture taken?

Oh yeah. It's an active commercial portrait studio. They do weddings and commercial shots and architecture and portraits—all the things you go to a studio for. It's just that the whole world of photography has changed. Everything is digital. At one point, it employed 40 people doing hand retouching and processing, and now all that happens digitally. My grandfather was one of the first early franchisers of Kodak, and now Kodak is defunct. It's just such a huge scope of the history of photography in our culture, and it's kind of nice to have a connection to that.

Back when you were at SAL, Christopher Frizzelle found you to be overly reverent. What do you think of that?

I don't think I was, actually, and I never complained to him about it, but frankly ... I think the role of the person introducing a speaker in front of an audience of 2,500 people is not to criticize people but to explain why people should have bothered to come, pay money, and listen to this particular writer speak about it. So in 250 words, I feel like my place was to digest as quickly and consistently the reasons i think their work was interesting. Before you're inviting somebody on stage is probably not the place to say "and I didn't like your third book."

And what will be your role at Artist Trust?

I think of it both as finding ways to support individual artists in doing their work, but I also think of it as a lot of advocacy. Individual artists are fundamental to the cultural vitality of our community and somebody needs to be able to point to that. ... Some of what we do is just talking about the value and the importance of the arts in our community so that people don't take it for granted.

How do you convince people? What's your style?

I think it depends on who you're talking to and what the context is. I'm pretty passionate and believe in the work that artists are doing. You don't always have to like everything, but you do have to engage with it respectfully and say "Gee, this person has ideas, and how can we think about it, and what does that do for us?" I like to engage with those thoughts and ideas that are presented to me.

Is there anything specific that you want to be asked that I didn't ask you?

Not having started yet, I'm not sure of the specifics! But I should say I'm excited. I feel lucky to have had what I think are three of the best jobs in Seattle.