May 8, 2008
New Henry director plans education initiative
Stepping into the directorship of the Henry Art Gallery feels like the right challenge at the right time for Sylvia Wolf. And though only a couple of weeks into her new job, she’s already thinking about the future with a planned education initiative for the popular art museum.
Wolf, who started at the UW on April 14, comes from the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, where she was an adjunct curator after running its photography department from 1999 to 2004. Before that, she spent 12 years at the world-class Art Institute of Chicago, producing more than two dozen shows.
“After 20 years of being a curator — 20 years of organizing exhibitions of all scopes, shapes and sizes, I’m ready to take what I’ve learned and to embrace new challenges,” she said. “And with a population of young adults that are culturally sophisticated and are here to inquire and wonder and engage in dialogue, the UW is a perfect fit for me.”
Her curatorial presence is still being felt in New York City, however. She just installed an exhibit at the Whitney of Polaroid photographs shot by artist Robert Mapplethorpe early in his career. She also wrote a book to accompany the exhibit, titled Polaroids: Mapplethorpe. Published in September 2007, it’s one of about a dozen books on art Wolf has written or compiled. Others are Visions from America: Photographs from the Whitney Museum of Art, 1940-2001; Michael Rovner: The Space Between; Julia Margaret Cameron’s Women and Ed Ruscha and Photography.
Recalling her work in Chicago and New York, Wolf said the move to the Henry “follows a logical trajectory, when I look back on it,” from the huge scope of the Art Institute to the Whitney’s focus on 20th and 21st century American art. “To go from there to the Henry, which has a broad-ranging collection and is nestled within a university — that to me was bringing together all my interests.”
Trained as an artist, Wolf is an administrator, a curator, a writer and a researcher, but she is a teacher, too. She helped develop the masters in curatorial studies program at Columbia University and has taught art and photography at the undergraduate and graduate level. She’ll have a faculty appointment here at the UW, too — the details are still being worked out — and she will be involved in campus art initiatives, as was her predecessor, Richard Andrews.
Wolf has high regard for Andrews, who retired in late April after a 20-year tenure as Henry director. “Richard accomplished extraordinary things at the Henry. He deepened and broadened the permanent collection, oversaw roughly 225 exhibitions, strengthened relations with patrons and colleagues, and directed the Henry’s expansion, which opened in 1997,” she said. “He’s been extraordinarily generous and supportive in this transition. It is a privilege to follow in his footsteps, though his are big shoes to fill.”
Wolf is spending her first few weeks in information sessions — “What I call listening sessions,” she said — with members of the staff, faculty and board to identify the gallery’s strengths and challenges. She hopes to bring some ideas for the future to the next meeting of the board of directors in June.
But one plan is already taking shape: Wolf wants to start a major education initiative at the Henry. Details are still being decided, she said, but will include bringing individuals from the national or international art community to the UW for temporary residencies. “It could be a visiting artist or scholar or curator, and it will rotate on an annual basis. What I’m most excited about is that the UW has committed to partnering in this initiative,” Wolf said. Funding for the position will be shared by the museum and the UW. “This creates a bridge between the museum and the University that will set the groundwork for further collaborations.”
The visiting colleagues would not only bring fresh eyes to the Henry, but could also help spread its good reputation, she said. “In my experience, when an artist comes to a institution and has a good experience, they become a mini-ambassador. They go back into the world and say, ‘Hey, the Henry’s a happening place, the University is lively and Seattle’s a vital cultural destination.'”
She added, however, that the gallery first needs to formalize its position with the University and the community with respect to education, “and that’s what I mean by an education initiative.” That could involve partnering not only with the School of Art, she said, but also perhaps with drama (“the Henry has a fabulous costume collection few people know about”) or the DX Arts Program for digital and experimental media.
Wolf is pleased with coming events already being planned at the Henry, including multimedia exhibits and more of the installation art the gallery is known for. “And our ongoing commitment to the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection will yield some thematically based exhibitions from the collection that I’m excited about.”
She’s enthusiastic, too, about the Henry’s ongoing program of creating digital versions of many items in the gallery’s permanent collection (a multiyear project partially funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences). Making such images available to people globally on the Internet, she said, will give the public access to the Henry’s deep collection in an unprecedented way.
“Every museum’s collection has so much more than is ever put on view,” Wolf explained. “While objects in the collection remain preserved in temperature and humidity-controlled environments when not on view, this program will make these works accessible, albeit digitally.”
Will it reduce people’s interest in seeing the real items? Absolutely not, she said. “There’s no substitute for the real thing. Our intention is that online access will generate interest in the Henry’s rich holdings, and bring visitors into the gallery for a direct experience with original art objects.”
Wolf said she knows that fundraising will be part of her role at the Henry. “I’m not naïve about what it takes to generate enthusiasm and funding, particularly for the contemporary arts,” she said. Contemporary work by its very nature can be challenging and “not always user-friendly,” but is no less important to present than more traditional and familiar art.
Rising prices and national financial distress, too, have an effect on cultural institutions as they do any business, she said, noting that it takes gas to truck art exhibits around. Wolf said it’s important to think about “how to operate within our means as well as find the funding to do what we do best.”
Wolf’s husband, Duane Schuler, is a theatrical lighting designer and founding partner of the theater consulting firm Schuler Shook, based out of Minneapolis, Dallas and Chicago and has worked with the Metropolitan Opera in New York as well as the Seattle Opera. The couple have a grown daughter, Isabel, who works at an advertising agency in New York. Wolf said she’s always had a fondness for Seattle, and her having been raised in the seaport town of Gloucester, Mass., means that “a maritime climate is familiar and welcome.”
When asked if she worries about competition from other arts organizations, Wolf said, “I like to use a different ‘c’ word — contribute. Rather than be preoccupied with how we can compete, I’m focused on what we contribute to the local and international art communities.
“The challenge — and the opportunity — lies in identifying what we do best, articulating who we are and then moving forward from a position of strength.
“The arts reflect the concerns of our time and provide the lens through which we come to understand our world. The humanities offer a means of interpreting and analyzing the arts. As an art museum situated within one of the strongest research universities in the country, the Henry is uniquely positioned to provide a rich experience of the art of our time. My goal is to make the Henry a destination,” she said. “For artists, scholars, students and anyone who is curious about what the arts bring to human experience.”
