Holly Hotchner, the director of the Museum of Arts and Design for the past 16 years, will leave the top post on April 30, 2013.
As director of the Museum of Arts and Design, Holly Hotchner renamed and rebranded the former Museum of American Craft and spearheaded its relocation to Columbus Circle. Late last week, the institution she remade announced that Hotchner will be stepping down from her leadership position effective April 30, 2013. David Gordon, the former director of the Milwaukee Art Museum will take over as acting director as the MAD board searches for a permanent replacement. In an unrelated personnel move, associate curator Jennifer Scanlan, who organized the exhibition “Playing with Fire: 50 Years of Contemporary Glass,“ will be moving on from her position at the Museum of Arts and Design after 12 years.
“To be able to build a new museum in this city, already so full with culture, and to develop such a dedicated and growing audience is more than I had ever dreamed,” Hotchner said in a prepared statement. “On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of our new home, I feel that it would be best for the institution I have nurtured and love to build upon all that has been achieved and move forward into the future with new leadership.”
Hotchner’s 16-year tenure will be remembered for her prescient and bold leadership in championing the relocation of the Museum of Arts and Design from its cramped quarters in the shadow of the Museum of Modern Art to a prominent location anchoring an ascendant Columbus Circle. She faced down wide hostility from prominent critics of the museum’s planned redesign and reuse of an important work by modern architect Edward Durell Stone. Hotchner has never shied away confrontation, facing a backlash when the rebranded museum removed the word “craft” from its name in 2002, much to the chagrin of longtime supporters of artwork from craft materials. The museum was originally founded in 1956 by the American Craft Council together with philanthropist Aileen Osborn Webb and many viewed the name change as a betrayal of its history. And yet the renamed museum successfully expanded its purview to artmaking and design in a wider variety of materials and methods, including lace (“Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting,” 2007), paper engineering (“Slash: Paper Under the Knife,” 2009), and even ash (“Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Design,“ 2012).
Hotchner will leave a far more financially robust institution than she took over in 1997, having multiplied its endowment by a factor of six. Her fundraising prowess was affirmed by the $110 million she helped raise to make the move to Columbus Circle possible.
Associate curator Jennifer Scanlan will be pursuing new opportunities after 12 years with the Museum of Arts and Design.
Unrelated to Hotchner’s resignation, associate curator Jennifer Scanlan also will be leaving to pursue new opportunities as a curator and scholar on glass art.
“After 12 years at MAD, I will be moving on to other projects,” she told the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet. “It has been a wonderful experience that has given me the opportunity to make many friends, particularly in the glass community. I am so proud to have ended my tenure with the exhibition ‘Playing with Fire: 50 Years of Contemporary Glass.’ I look forward to staying in touch with everyone as I move to the next phase of my career.”