Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum director will soon retire. Who will take over? | Opinion 

A group of Sacramentans recently toured art museums in Orange and San Diego counties. It was an opportunity to see quality art, but most importantly, it was a chance to see publicly accessible art museums outside of the Sacramento region. Why is this important now? Because the Crocker Art Museum’s longstanding director, Lial Jones, will soon conclude a quarter-century career at the helm of Sacramento’s primary art museum.

Few could match what Jones has brought to the Crocker, especially in terms of outreach, access and education. Despite her admirable list of these and other achievements, Jones would be the first to acknowledge that running a big-time public art museum these days isn’t for the timid, and that includes the Crocker.

The Crocker Board of Directors will need to bring its best to the search for that just-right person to helm the museum’s next chapter. Not talked about enough is how the best candidates for Jones’ job will assess the opportunity.

It’ll likely be apparent to those candidates that, unlike the many Southern California art museums on the recent Crocker-led tour, Sacramento essentially has one dominant art museum in the Crocker. It will also be apparent that few public art museums offer the range, depth and diversity of what’s at the Crocker, and few have anything close to its history — it being the first public art museum in the western U.S., founded in 1885.

Crocker fundraising

Let’s go out of state to further compare the Crocker opportunity — in this case, to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Sacramento and Kansas City are metro areas of about the same size; both have one prominent public art facility; both enjoy historic original buildings more recently roughly doubled in size; and both used prominent architects to design those additions (Steven Holl in Kansas City in 2007, and Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman in Sacramento in 2010).

One big difference: the Nelson-Atkins just announced plans for a $170 million expansion. Leaders there expressed confidence in their ability to raise the money for the project — all, it said, from private sources. How is this possible?

In Kansas City, homegrown companies and the families behind them include such venerable firms as Hallmark, Helzberg Jewelers, the Kauffman Foundation (Marion Laboratories), H&R Block, Garmin and Cerner (now Oracle Cerner). The families behind these can reliably be expected to foot a significant portion of the $170 million museum expansion tab.

In contrast, Sacramento’s largest employers are mostly government and non-profit organizations. It will be apparent to candidates for the Crocker’s top job that fundraising will be a particular challenge here.

Who does the Crocker need?

Then there are the skill sets the Crocker’s new director needs to possess. For this, let’s do another comparison — in this case, to what is likely America’s most famous art museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Like the Crocker’s Jones, the Met’s Glen Lowry just announced his retirement after many years of service. In discussing what The Met is looking for in his successor, The New York Times’ art and culture reporter Robin Pogrebin recently wrote this: “Presiding over a major museum these days requires considerably more than a Ph.D. in art history and the ability to hire capable curators. Directors must be culturally sensitive diplomats — able to communicate effectively with artists, trustees and potential activists — as well as expert fund-raisers, with cultural institutions depending more than ever on private donations.”

That might be just as applicable to the Crocker’s search. But is it what the Crocker Board of Directors will look for? Or will it seek a proven fundraiser? Someone with a notable curatorial resume? Or, as the late Tom Wolfe might have said, a flashing neon master of the universe? That bon vivant that shows up on the art scene now and then like the former director of Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Richard Koshalek?

For Sacramento’s sake, one could easily conclude that rather than hiring a noted art industry grandee, someone who fits into the community might well be at or near the top of the criteria list. While fundraising at the Crocker will be needed more than ever, institutional partnerships and community connection will be increasingly important, especially given the Crocker’s ties to Sacramento City Hall.

Sacramento can’t go wrong

The Crocker is well established as the premier center for art in the region. Even in the unlikely event other art museums crop up here, much like the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, and absent a series of disastrous decisions, there really isn’t a threat the Crocker loses its pole position.

Given its stature and regional prominence though, the Crocker can’t get key decisions on these challenges wrong, especially since all the region’s publicly accessible art eggs reside nearly completely in one basket.