Kaywin Feldman

Last updated

Kaywin Feldman
Born1966 (age 56–57)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
EducationBA, University of Michigan;
MA, (archaeology) University of London;
MA, (art history) University of London
OccupationMuseum director
Years active1994 to present
TitleDirector of the National Gallery of Art
Term2008 to 2019

Kaywin Feldman is an American museum administrator and director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Named on December 11, 2018, Feldman took over from Earl A. Powell III in March 2019. She is the National Gallery of Art's first woman director.

Contents

Childhood and education

Feldman was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1966. [1] Feldman's father was in the military, and the family moved often. They lived in or near Boston; Cleveland, Ohio; Washington, D.C. (she attended high school in Silver Spring, Maryland), and London in the United Kingdom. [2] [3] She was exposed to many museums in her childhood, [2] and developed an interest in archaeology. She obtained a bachelor's degree in classical archaeology from the University of Michigan and a master's degree from the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London. She also obtained a master's in art history from the University of London's Courtauld Institute of Art, writing her thesis on 16th-century Flemish art with a particular focus on representations of satyrs. [2] [4] While studying in London she worked at the British Museum. [2]

Professional career

When she was 28, Feldman became director of the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science. [5] From 1999 until 2007 Feldman was director of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. [3] In 2008 she became director and president of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. [6] During her tenure, she expanded the collection and attendance doubled. [7] Digital access was emphasized, and social justice and equity programs were adopted. [8] [9] Upon being selected by the National Gallery, she resigned her offices at the Minneapolis Institute with her last day set on March 1, 2019, [10] and assumed her new position in Washington ten days later. [11] She is the NGA's first woman director. [7]

Feldman previously served as president of the Association of Art Museum Directors and as chair of the American Alliance of Museums. [7] [12]

Views on women in the arts and in art museum professions

On February 4, 2020, Feldman participated in a public conversation at the Brooklyn Museum titled "Women Leaders in the Arts" during which she made the claim that "art museums, the arts, and arts faculties at universities" have become "so predominantly filled with women" that hiring men in these fields is now a priority for the sake of diversity. She added that "of course all studies show that when a profession becomes 'pink-collared,' whether you wear a pink collar or not, salaries go down." [13] [14] Feldman made these assertions despite a 2014 report by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) which "found that a gender gap existed in art museum directorships... that women held less than half of directorships, that the average female director’s salary lagged behind that of the average male director, and that these phenomena were most persistent in the largest museums." [15] A second report in 2017 found that, "despite press attention and field-wide dialogue on the topic, the gender gap persists." [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Gallery of Art</span> National art museum in Washington, D.C., United States

The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minneapolis Institute of Art</span> Art museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota

The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United States. Its permanent collection includes world-famous works that embody the highest levels of artistic achievement, spanning about 20,000 years and representing the world’s diverse cultures across six continents. The museum has seven curatorial areas: Arts of Africa & the Americas; Contemporary Art; Decorative Arts, Textiles & Sculpture; Asian Art; Paintings; Photography and New Media; and Prints and Drawings.

Mary "Mimi" Gates is an American art historian who is the recent director of the Seattle Art Museum. In 1996, she married Bill Gates Sr., the father of Bill Gates.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is a Native American visual artist and curator. She is an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and is also of Métis and Shoshone descent. She is also an art educator, art advocate, and political activist. She has been prolific in her long career, and her work draws from a Native worldview and comments on American Indian identity, histories of oppression, and environmental issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Alliance of Museums</span> American non-profit association

The American Alliance of Museums (AAM), formerly the American Association of Museums, is a non-profit association whose goal is to bring museums together. It was founded in 1906, helping develop standards and best practices, gathering and sharing knowledge, and advocating on issues of concern to the museum community. AAM works to help museums be a vital part of the American landscape, connecting people with the greatest achievements of the human experience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lorna Simpson</span> American photographer and multimedia artist

Lorna Simpson is an American photographer and multimedia artist. She came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Simpson is most well known for her work in conceptual photography. Her works have been included in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally. She is best known for her photo-text installations, photo-collages, and films. Her early work raised questions about the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history. Simpson continues to explore these themes in relation to memory and history in various media including photography, film, video, painting, drawing, audio, and sculpture.

Lisa Nankivil is a contemporary American painter and printmaker.

Teri Greeves is a Native American beadwork artist, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is enrolled in the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Amos (painter)</span> American painter

Emma Amos was a postmodern African-American painter and printmaker.

Shelley Niro is a Mohawk filmmaker and visual artist from New York and Ontario. She is known for her photographs using herself and female family members cast in contemporary positions to challenge the stereotypes and clichés of Native American women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earl A. Powell III</span> American art historian

Earl Alexander Powell III, nicknamed Rusty Powell, is an American art historian and museum director. From 1980 to 1992, he was Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was appointed Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in September 1992. The Gallery announced in November 2017 that Powell would step down in 2019. He was appointed to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in 2003 and elected Chair in 2005. He was appointed to a second four-year term on August 30, 2012, and continues to serve as Chair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vidya Dehejia</span> American art historian and curator

Vidya Dehejia is a retired American academic and the Barbara Stoler Miller Professor Emerita of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University. She has published 24 books and numerous academic papers on the art of South Asia, and has curated many exhibitions on the same theme.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Broun</span>

Elizabeth "Betsy" Broun is an American art historian and curator. Broun served as the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum from 1989 to 2016, and is the longest-serving female director in the history of the Smithsonian Institution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olga Viso</span>

Olga Viso is a Cuban American curator of modern and contemporary art and a museum director based at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts in Tempe, Arizona. She served as executive director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota from 2007 through 2017, and was curator of contemporary art and director of the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC from 1995-2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Lee Bendolph</span> American quilt maker

Mary Lee Bendolph is an American quilt maker of the Gee's Bend Collective from Gee's Bend (Boykin), Alabama. Her work has been influential on subsequent quilters and artists and her quilts have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the country. Bendolph uses fabric from used clothing for quilting in appreciation of the "love and spirit" with old cloth. Bendolph has spent her life in Gee's Bend and has had work featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota.

Deborah Bright is a 20th-century American photographer and artist, writer, and educator. She is particularly noted for her imagery and scholarship on queer desire and politics, as well as on the ideologies of American landscape photography. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Fogg Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Bright's photographic projects have been exhibited internationally.

Pao Houa Her is a Hmong-American photographer whose works are primarily centered around the history and lived experiences of the Hmong people. Her's photography consists of greenery and geographic images. She is also a professor at the University of Minnesota and teaches Introduction to Photography.

Evelyn Vanderhoop is a Native American artist of Haida descent who is both a watercolorist and master weaver.

<i>Afro-Atlantic Histories</i>

Afro-Atlantic Histories is the title of a touring art exhibition first held jointly at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in Brazil in 2018. The exhibition is made up of artworks and historical artifacts from and about the African diaspora, specifically focusing "on the 'ebbs and flows' among Africa, Americas, Caribbean and also Europe." Built around the concept of histórias, a Portuguese term that can include fictional and non-fictional narratives, Afro-Atlantic Histories explores the artistic, political, social, and personal impacts and legacies of the Transatlantic slave trade. The exhibition has been hailed by critics as a landmark show of diasporic African art. Following the original 2018 exhibition, MASP partnered with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to bring a version of the exhibition to several museums in the United States from 2021 to 2024.

Edgar "Pete" Peters Bowron is an American art historian and curator. Bowron served a director of both the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Harvard Art Museums. He is a scholar of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian art, especially on the artist Pompeo Batoni.

References

  1. ↑ Maneker, Marion (11 December 2018). "National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC Names Kaywin Feldman Its Fifth Director". Art Market Monitor. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Gihring, Tim, "Prize Acquisition". Minnesota Monthly , September 18, 2008.
  3. 1 2 Stapley-Brown, Viktoria, "National Gallery of Art in Washington hires its first female director". The Art Newspaper, December 11, 2018.
  4. ↑ "Kaywin Feldman". Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
  5. ↑ "Kaywin Feldman Becomes the First Woman to Direct the National Gallery of Art in Washington". artnet News. 11 December 2018. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  6. ↑ "Kaywin Feldman Named Director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts". www.artforum.com. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  7. 1 2 3 Pogrebin, Robin (11 December 2018). "National Gallery of Art Chooses First Female Director". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  8. ↑ Kerr, Euan, "Mia's director will leave to head National Gallery", Minnesota Public Radio News , December 11, 2018.
  9. ↑ McGlone, Peggy, "The National Gallery of Art will have a female director for the first time in its history", The Washington Post , December 11, 2018.
  10. ↑ "Thank you, Kaywin Feldman", Mia
  11. ↑ "National Gallery of Art Picks Kaywin Feldman as Next Director", ARTnews , December 11, 2018
  12. ↑ "National Gallery of Art in Washington hires its first female director". theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  13. ↑ "Conversation: Women Leaders in the Arts". 31 January 2020.
  14. ↑ "What Are the Biggest Challenges Facing Museums Today? Three Directors Commiserate on the 'Culture of Meanness' and Other Issues". 5 February 2020.
  15. ↑ https://aamd.org/sites/default/files/document/The%20Gender%20Gap%20in%20Art%20Museum%20Directorships_0.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  16. ↑ "Gender Gap Report 2017".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.