PROVIDENCE — Nearly two years after the surprise resignation of its previous museum director, the Rhode Island School of Design has named a new head for its Museum of Art.
John W. Smith, an archivist and art historian who is currently director of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and a former assistant director at the Andy Warhol Museum, is expected to take over as director of the state’s largest art museum in mid-September.
Smith’s appointment caps a long period of turmoil at the museum, which lost its previous director, Hope Alswang, under still-unexplained circumstances. According to school officials, Alswang voluntarily resigned in August 2009 to “pursue other opportunities.” But Alswang’s supporters have maintained that she was forced out after clashing with RISD President John Maeda.
For the past two years, the museum has been led by interim-Director Ann Woolsey. During that time, neither Maeda nor Alswang, who has since become director of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., has spoken publicly about the reasons for her resignation.
In interviews Wednesday, RISD officials praised Smith, 51, for his leadership and audience-building skills, noting that, in five years, he had helped transform the Archives of American Art from a relatively staid institution into a much more dynamic place that mounts regular exhibits and attracts thousands of visitors annually. They also insisted that the sometimes strained relations between the school and its museum had improved dramatically since Alswang’s departure.
“It’s tremendously exciting to have someone of John’s caliber coming to the museum,” said Bank Rhode Island President Merrill Sherman, who chairs RISD’s board of trustees. “At the Smithsonian, he’s responsible for a collection that stretches back as far as the Colonial era. But thanks to his time at the Warhol Museum, he’s also very knowledgeable about contemporary art.”
Citing recent changes in RISD’s organizational structure, Sherman also said that Smith would have a freer hand in running the museum than some of his predecessors.
In particular, Sherman pointed to a newly created oversight board composed of school and museum trustees that will be charged with assessing the museum director’s performance. Previously, the RISD museum director reported directly to the school’s president.
“When you look back over the past few years, you see that we’ve had a number of museum directors whose tenure might have been less than we would have wished,” she said. “Now, I think, we have the people and the organizational structure in place to take it to the next level.”
Reached by phone at his Washington, D.C., office, Smith said that he was attracted to the job for both personal and professional reasons.
“I’ve been a great admirer of the Rhode Island School of Design and the City of Providence for a very long time,” he said. “As for the RISD museum, it is quite simply one of the great small museums in country. It has a fabulous collection displayed in a wonderful set of galleries.”
Smith also said he had fond memories of RISD from his time at the Andy Warhol Museum.
In 2002, he visited the museum for the opening of “Collection Obsession: Andy Warhol and Collecting,” a traveling exhibition that he helped curate. He also cited RISD’s involvement with “Raid the Icebox,” a 1970 exhibit in which Warhol was invited to select works from the museum’s permanent collection.
Since 2006, Smith has served as director of the Archives of American Art, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution that collects artists’ papers from the Colonial era to the present. During his tenure, he vastly expanded the archives’ publication and exhibition programs and raised more than $15 million.
Prior to that, Smith served as assistant director for collections and exhibitions at Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum and as chief archivist at the Art Institute of Chicago.
At RISD, Smith will oversee a museum with an annual budget of $7 million and a yearly attendance of nearly 100,000. In 2008, the last year for which public records are available, the RISD museum director earned $245,285.