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SAM announces that Derrick Cartwright will take helm
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Derrick Cartwright, the new director for the Seattle Art Museum
Yesterday, the Seattle Art Museum announced its new director, who will be taking over after Mimi Gates leaves this summer. He is Derrick Cartwright, and he is coming to us from the San Diego Museum of Art. In addition to being a museum director, he is an art historian and scholar. Interviews and information I've seen about him suggest he is thoughtful, if a little bland in a corporate way.
The hiring process for this position wasn't made public, so we don't really know who the other contenders were. That said, given Carwright's reputation for safe, somewhat blah museum direction (SDMofA is more known for having a collection that's a mile wide and an inch deep), I am surprised that SAM didn't choose someone who is a little more cutting edge.
Mimi Gates has a left a substantial - and ambitious - legacy for SAM. She oversaw the construction of the Sculpture Park and the new building downtown. I'm pretty sure there was also a renovation of the SAAM in there, too. The shows she has drawn have been a mixed bag, but the travelling shows (Rome, Garden and Cosmos, Gates of Paradise, etc.) have all been quite good, though not always revolutionary in their presentation. Gates has also been decently good at bringing in shows that interact with each other -- I'm thinking of Titus Kaphar's History in the Making as it dovetails with both the Life, Liberty, etc. and Target Practice for later this summer.
Where SAM has really fallen short in the last few years is in creative re-approaches to its own collection, and overspending on blockbuster shows. I want to see a SAM that does a better job of reaching out to young people, that makes a greater effort to educate its patrons - while they're in the galleries. Their recent changes in their admission policy (now pay-what-you-can) increase its accessibility, and I did see a printed gallery guide for the Yale show, but I still want to see more gallery audio tours, I want to see local artists being allowed to sketch in the galleries, I want to see SAM do a better job of integrating itself with the Seattle community.
What would you like to see from Cartwright while he directs SAM? And where do you think SAM could improve?
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