Boston Art Museums Looking For New Leadership

Three of the Boston's biggest art museums are looking for new leadership. The Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard Art Museums and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum have all announced a need for new directorship.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum director Anne Hawley, served for 25 years as director who launched a successful $180 million capital campaign. She was appointed Director in 1989 after the departure of her predecessor Rollin Van N. Hadley in 1988. With museum attendance in decline, and both the building and its collection in need of repair, under Ms. Hawley's direction the museum entered a period of major restoration. In 1992, she launched the hugely successful Artist-in-Residence program with the aim to revive "the intellectual and artistic life so integral to the vitality of Fenway Court" during Isabella Stewart Gardner's lifetime.

Malcolm Rogers has served as the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, since 1994. In this role he has brought both extensive popularity and controversy to the museum. Rogers was educated at Oakham School, Magdalen College, and Christ Church, Oxford, earning a B.A. with first class honors and a D.Phil. in English. Prior to his position at the MFA, Boston, he worked his way up from librarian to Deputy Director at the National Portrait Gallery in London. An expert on portraiture, he has published extensively on the subject.

Thomas W. Lentz serves as the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums. He has held numerous roles in the field of museum leadership. In 1982, he took his first role as curator at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in the Asian art department, until 1984, when he took a curator role at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Egyptian, Islamic, and West Asian art. n 1992, Lentz left the LACMA for an assistant director position at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, both at the Smithsonian Institution. In 1995, he was promoted to deputy and then acting director. In 2000, he officially became the director of the International Art Museums as the Smithsonian Institution, covering all the departments he had worked for previously.n November 15, 2003, Lentz was named the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums.