Tim Close, who has been executive director of the Boise Art Museum since 2000, will start work May 15 as the new director of the Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art in Tacoma.

Close is a photographer whose work is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. (I don’t know what kind of work he does, and he wasn’t available when I called him just now.) He got his BFA from Arizona State University and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Before Boise, he was executive director of the Albany Museum of Art in Georgia for six years, and prior to that, he led the Arlington Arts Center (a contemporary space for regional artists) in Virginia. He has attended the Museum Management Institute at the J. Paul Getty Trust (which is based on a program that Tacoma Art Museum chief curator Patricia McDonnell was instrumental in forming).

According to George Weyerhaeuser, Jr., the chairman of the museum’s board, Close’s expertise is in contemporary art, “and he is deeply interested in contemporary glass.”

Another trustee described the new director in a press statement as “a motivational leader who believes in teamwork with staff and collaboration with the community,” which sounds like a contrast to the 4-year-old museum’s founding director, Josi Callan, who was not popular among staffers. She made a whopping $282,000, according to tax records the museum filed with the IRS.

The News Tribune in Tacoma reports this morning that Close will make only $180,000, which Weyerhaeuser admits brings the museum much more in line with industry standards.