Arnold L. Lehman Plans Retirement from Brooklyn Museum in 2015

September 10, 2014...Brooklyn, N.Y. Arnold L. Lehman, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, announced yesterday at the fall meeting of the Board of Trustees that he will retire in mid-2015. Lehman, who turned 70 in July, joined the Brooklyn Museum as Director in September 1997.

Under his leadership, the Brooklyn Museum has undergone nearly two decades of sustained growth, more than doubling its audience and its endowment, refocusing attention on the visitor, expanding and significantly enhancing its landmark building, re-envisioning and re-installing much of its permanent collection, developing a dynamic exhibition program for its Brooklyn site as well as for its national traveling exhibitions, pioneering new technology and, overall, renewing the commitment of a world-renowned institution to its metropolitan area community of artists, families and young people.

"My seventeen years to date at the helm of this remarkable institution have been challenging, exhilarating, and immensely rewarding. I believe that the Brooklyn Museum is well-positioned to continue its successful trajectory, serving its diverse community and visitors as a visionary leader in the museum world. I will leave the Museum in the hands of a dedicated new Board Chair, Elizabeth Sackler, and incredibly committed Trustees and staff. I especially look forward, as an ongoing advocate and cheerleader, to seeing this truly extraordinary art museum continue to be a pace-setter under the leadership of my successor," said Lehman.

"As Director, Arnold truly must be lauded for transforming the Brooklyn Museum - one of the oldest and largest museums in the country - into one of the most dynamic cultural institutions anywhere. Through his vision, Brooklyn has evolved and grown into a museum that greatly advances its twenty-first century mission dedicated to the primacy of the visitor, the diversity of its audience, and the exceptional quality of its collection and educational programs. My colleague Trustees and I understand and appreciate Arnold's decision to retire next year. Having worked with Arnold for a decade, my only wish would have been to have even more time to continue working together with him over my tenure as Chair," comments Board Chair Elizabeth A. Sackler. "Without question," continued Dr. Sackler, "beyond his passionate embrace of the Museum as an institution and Brooklyn as a community, Arnold shall be forever acknowledged as a tenacious advocate for freedom of expression, for his total support of diversity and accessibility, for his total commitment to feminist art, and for his embrace of Brooklyn artists."

In 2001 a paradigm change for the Museum took place with the adoption of a new mission statement, spearheaded by Lehman, which emphasized the unique experience of each visitor within the broader context of serving a diverse public as a center for learning through the visual arts. This refocusing helped to fuel more than a doubling of attendance over the past decade as well as a new engagement with underserved audiences and younger visitors. By 2014, people of color made up more than 40% of the Museum's visitors and the average visitor age was approximately 35 (more than 20 years younger than the average age in1997). These major demographic changes were encouraged and supported by a total commitment to community programming, such as the Museum's widely emulated and enormously successful First Saturdays. Over the decade of First Saturdays through July 2014, more than one million people throughout New York City participated.

Together with extraordinarily active public and educational programming, Lehman dynamically increased the number, scope, and focus of the Museum's exhibitions. With heightened appeal to the increasing diversity and youth of the Museum's audience, since 1997 over 200 exhibitions focused on the strengths of Brooklyn Museum's great collections, such as American and Egyptian art and the Arts of the Americas; on contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on Brooklyn artists; on feminist art; and on popular culture, from Hip Hop to street art to fashion. Among the most memorable and significant of these exhibitions were Monet and the Mediterranean,1997; Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, 1999; Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes and Rage, 2000; Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum, 2001-2002; Open House: Working in Brooklyn, 2004; Basquiat, 2005; Global Feminisms, 2007; © MURAKAMI, 2008; Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties, 2011-2012; John Singer Sargent Watercolors, 2013; Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui, 2013; Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties, 2014; and Ai Weiwei: According to What?, 2014.

Mr. Lehman was perhaps even more committed to the significance of the Museum's vast permanent collections and the need to effectively install those collections in order to encourage visitors to continue to rediscover the Museum's great treasures. Rethinking current practice to better present the permanent collection began with American Identities: A New Look in 2001, which was met with enormous popular acclaim; the Luce Visible Storage Study Center in 2005, which provided visitors with a creative overview of the permanent collections' magnitude and breadth; The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago in 2007, which, as the focal point of the new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, created the first museum-centered focus on feminist art in the nation; and Connecting Cultures in 2012, which was designed to provide an immediate and provocative introduction to the Museum's collections scattered over five floors of galleries.

Looking for new strategies to additionally enhance the visitor's experience at the Museum and virtually, Lehman actively encouraged the implementation and growth of the Museum's technological capacity. Over a relatively short period of time, Brooklyn's interactive initiatives received international recognition for pioneering work in social media, crowd-sourced activities and exhibitions, and visitor education and engagement, which are among its highest priorities moving forward.

In order to provide the needed structural framework for the visitor experience, Mr. Lehman led a major ongoing building redesign and renewal program, beginning soon after his arrival with the total renovation of the Museum's 350,000 volume Art Research Library. That was followed in 2004 by the opening of the Museum's critically acclaimed and accessible new front entrance, lobby, and public plaza, designed by the Polshek Partnership (now Ennead Architects). Ongoing building-wide infrastructure enhancement and comprehensive climate control systems have been continuously implemented over the past twelve years. To expand the visitor experience, multiple gallery and interior public space projects have been completed or are in process, including a decade-long project resulting in the complete transformation of the entire first, second, and third floors, including the opening of new Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian, and Islamic galleries scheduled for 2016. Mr. Lehman orchestrated these projects with the active collaboration and support of the City, New York State, Museum Trustees and other private funders.

Lehman took the same activist approach to curatorial management as he did in redefining and enhancing the physical environment of the Museum. He reorganized the Museum's curatorial departments to better align with contemporary museum practice and to encourage curatorial collaboration. One of the great successes of this reorganization was the creation of an exhibitions division, which more than tripled the Museum's development and national distribution of major exhibitions. To bring greater public recognition to the extraordinary curatorial leadership at the Museum, Mr. Lehman successfully focused important fundraising on the creation of endowed chairs such as the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of the Arts of the Americas, the Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator of Asian Art, the Carol Lee Shen Chief Conservator, the Sackler Family Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and the John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art. Last spring Mr. Lehman was honored with the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director's chair.

The curatorial department re-alignment also produced significant collaborations among collection areas and helped to refocus the Museum's accessions program, which resulted in nearly 10,000 important new acquisitions since 1997. At the same time, Mr. Lehman called for a careful assessment and recalibration of the permanent collection, resulting in the significant de-accessioning of redundant and non-museum quality material, as well as works outside the focus of the Museum's comprehensive holdings. Approximately 400,000 objects, largely composed of a vast study collection of textiles, as well as thousands of Central American ceramic fragments, have been deaccessioned in the past 15 years. This number also includes the 24,000 objects in Brooklyn's renowned costume collection. After a four year intensive study supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Brooklyn's costume collection was transferred to the Metropolitan Museum in 2007 in one of the largest and most important collection-sharing initiatives in American museum history.

Outside the Brooklyn Museum, Mr. Lehman played active roles in both the national art museum community and within the larger cultural community in New York City. As a member for almost four decades and as a former long-time Trustee and Chair of the Association of Art Museum Directors, Mr. Lehman actively worked towards diversifying and broadening the membership of this major national professional association.

Locally, Mr. Lehman has twice chaired the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) of New York City, which represents 33 major cultural organizations in or on City-owned property. As chair and major advocate, he has played a highly effective role in city government on behalf of the CIG membership at the same time that he undertook a collaborative role within the larger cultural community of New York City. Mr. Lehman has also served for many years as a Trustee of the American Federation of Arts, on the Executive Planning Committee of the Bard Graduate Center, and as Lead Director of the Legg Mason Funds.

Arnold L. Lehman, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director Condensed Biography

Since 1997 Arnold Lehman has served as Director of the Brooklyn Museum, one of the oldest and largest fine arts collections in the nation.His first official act as Director was to march in Brooklyn's West Indian Labor Day Parade down Eastern Parkway.

Since then, he has placed a priority on the individual visitor's experience and the community's engagement with the Museum through the presentation of innovative exhibitions and dynamic reinstallations of the permanent collections; the accessibility of the Museum; highly successful public and educational programs that address the diversity of the collection and the community; and the growth and preservation of its collections.

Prior to his leadership in Brooklyn, Dr. Lehman (B.A., M.A., Johns Hopkins University; M. Phil., Ph.D., Yale University; D.H.L. (Hon.), Pratt University) was the Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art for almost two decades (1979-1997), and Adjunct Professor of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. Previously he was Chester Dale Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Lecturer in Art History at Hunter College and Cooper Union; Executive Director of the Urban Improvements Program for the City of New York; Director of the Parks Council of New York City; and Director of Miami's Metropolitan Museum and Art Centers (1974-1979).

Dr. Lehman has served as the President of the Association of Art Museum Directors and was Chair of the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) of New York City, representing 33 major cultural institutions, from 2008 to 2011, and was reelected to that position in 2013 and continues in that capacity. He served as Co-Chair of the Arts and Culture Transition Committee for New York's new Mayor Bill de Blasio and was Co-Chair for Arts and Culture for the new Borough President Eric Adams's transition group. Mr. Lehman also has served for many years as a Trustee of the American Federation of Arts, on the Executive Planning Committee of the Bard Graduate Center, and as Lead Director of the Legg Mason Funds.