Cleveland Museum of Art

photo: John Hazeltine

Cleveland, OH

216-421-7340

http://www.clemusart.com/



 

Katharine Lee Reid New Director at Cleveland Museum of Art

 

Katharine Lee Reid has assumed her duties as CMA's sixth director as of March 13, 2000. Mrs. Reid, 58, has been the Director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 1991. Kate Sellers, who has been acting director since the untimely death of Robert P. Bergman last May, will resume her duties as CMA's Deputy Director and Director of Development and External Affairs. (left: Katharine Lee Reid. Photo courtesy of CMA)

Prior to her directorship at the Virginia museum, Mrs. Reid was the Deputy Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, a position she had held since 1986. She has been a curator of the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and held curatorial staff positions at the David and Alfred Smart Museum at the University of Chicago and at the Toledo Museum of Art.

In accepting the Cleveland post, Mrs. Reid said: "It is exhilarating and a great honor to be offered this opportunity. The remarkable collections, the excellent staff, and the committed board of trustees are admired internationally among art museums. The challenge for the future is keeping and expanding the museum's influence, so that the wonders of works of art can become an even more meaningful part of the lives of many. I also very much look forward to returning to my home town!"

As the daughter of Sherman E. Lee, CMA director from 1958-1983, Mrs. Reid's earliest experience in the art museum field was at the Cleveland museum. She attended Laurel School in Shaker Heights. She graduated magna cum laude from Vassar College, and completed a master of fine arts degree from Harvard University. In 1963 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Sorbonne and Institut d'Art et Archaeologie in Paris, and in 1966 she studied museum curatorship at the Toledo Museum of Art. Her areas of special interest include 17th-century European paintings, 20th-century painting and sculpture and late-19th- and 20th-century American and European decorative arts.

Mrs. Reid is Vice President of the Association of Art Museum Directors and a board member of the Accreditation Commission of the American Association of Museums, the Phillips Collection, and the American Federation of the Arts. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is a state-supported museum with a comprehensive collection. It is especially known for its collection of Art Nouveau and Art Deco decorative arts, and the famous Pratt Collection of jeweled Fabergé objects from the court of the Russian czars. Operating on an annual budget in excess of $l6 million, the museum's average attendance is over 800,000 annually including visitors to statewide sites.

Particularly rich in its Asian, medieval, and pre-Columbian art, the CMA is known for the breadth and quality of its collection. The New York Times has described the museum as "one of the nation's premier collections," and Britain's famous "art nun" Sister Wendy Beckett has chosen it as one of only six major American art museums for her next television series-Sister Wendy's American Collection, a six-part series being co-produced by Spire Films in London and WGBH in Boston. The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of Cleveland's top tourist destinations.

Read more about the Cleveland Museum of Art in Resource Library Magazine

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rev. 1/6/11


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