Meet the new Cincinnati Art Museum director

• Endowment as of 12/31/13%3A %2487 million
• Members%3A About 6%2C000
• Employees as of 8/31/13%3A 107 full time%2C 121 part time
• Visitors for year through 8/31/13%3A 190%2C478

Cameron Kitchin, director of Memphis' Brooks Museum of Art, has been named the new director of the Cincinnati Art Museum after a nearly seven-month search.

Kitchin's appointment was announced by press release after the museum board voted to approve his hiring Tuesday afternoon.

Kitchin is the ninth director in the museum's 132-year-history. He replaces Aaron Betsky, who was in the job nearly eight years.

He'll begin his new job in Cincinnati Oct. 1. Betsky's last day was May 1.

Kitchin was in Cincinnati Tuesday to meet with the board. He'll be in Cincinnati Wednesday for what has been described as "internal meetings" but will make no public appearances. The Enquirer's request for an interview, made through top museum staff to the museum board, was denied.

In an interview after the board vote, President Martha Ragland talked about what stood out about Kitchin.

First, she said, he is an accomplished museum leader, having directed museums for the last 12 years. She was impressed listening him talk about his work with curators and museum staff. "He's never done anything in his career in isolation. He's never done anything alone," she said.

A second factor that stood for Ragland was his passion for art. "When you hear him speak, and learn about the passion he has for engaging people with art, then you really feel his love for it," she said.

Then there was his commitment to embrace Cincinnati. "He wants to make art more accessible to all people of all ages, of all diversity, ages and abilities," Ragland said.

Kitchin's expertise appears to be in museum management and strategic planning. The Norfolk, Va., native has a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Harvard University and an MBA from the Mason Graduate School of William & Mary. Before arriving in Memphis in 2008, he served as executive director of the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art for six years. Before that, he oversaw the American Alliance of Museums' strategic planning process.

Nathan A. Bicks, chairman of the board of the Brooks Museum of Art, told the Enquirer Tuesday that Kitchin has led the Memphis museum through two strategic plans. The most recent plan featured an innovative way to turn goals into metrics, providing a way to measure the success of a program, and offer transparency to the community, Bicks said.

"He's a very smart and talented individual -- and he is well ensconced in the leading theories of museum management. He's a good strategic thinker with a wonderful family," Bicks said. "It's a loss for our community and a real benefit to Cincinnati."

Kitchin is, Bicks said, "a very literate and cultured person, tempered by the fact that he's got three small children and is very involved in their lives and in their schools." (He's also a huge Memphis Grizzlies fan, who will have to settle for college basketball here.)

Kitchin also has "done a great job making the museum a full participant in the community" and is an advocate for how arts can benefit a community, particularly in education, Bicks said.

His wife, Katie, is executive director of the Community Alliance for the Homeless.

"I am happy to have a new colleague in place, I can't wait to show him around the Taft, and I look forward to working with him," said Deborah Emont Scott, director of the Taft Museum of Art.

Kitchin has a big job ahead of him. One of those jobs will be to raise money.

The museum has an annual operating budget of about $11 million, a number that could be increased with an annual draw from a larger endowment fund. Betsky served his entire tenure hampered by a tight budget, but he balanced the budget every year with few staff reductions. For comparison, the Brooks' annual operating budget is about $4 million.

When Betsky arrived in 2006, the endowment was $63 million, compared with $87 million at the end of 2013. An endowment helps an institution maintain a stable budget, weather ups and downs, and plan for the future. The majority of the Cincinnati Art Museum's endowment is restricted for acquisitions. And it's low compared with similarly situated museums.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art has an endowment of about $340 million, the St. Louis Art Museum $140 million and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City $390 million.

In interviews last January, board chairman David Dougherty said a new director needed to be, "someone great at exhibitions, first and foremost."

The museum has had few exhibitions in recent years considered "blockbuster" -- those types of exhibitions that could be considered regional or even national draws. The museum's "Monet in Giverny" exhibition from 2012 probably best fits that blockbuster definition.

Many recent exhibitions have been ones drawn primarily from the its own collection. They're easier to make work on a tight budget.

The museum has high hopes for the upcoming "Conversations Around American Gothic" exhibition, opening Aug. 30. It's a small show, with only eight paintings, but one of them is Grant Wood's "American Gothic," one of the most iconic works of art ever and a painting that rarely travels outside its home at the Art Institute of Chicago. Betsky helped make the exhibition possible by working directly with the Art Institute director Douglas Druick, offering a trade of one of Cincinnati's prize works, Grant Wood's "Daughters of Revolution."

Ragland, also in January, said the new director needed to be "someone who respects Cincinnati and who is respected by Cincinnati." Dougherty said a new director had to have "people skills."

Compared with his predecessor Timothy Rub, whose outgoing personality charmed Cincinnati, Betsky was seen as an intellectual who had trouble warming up to the more conservative parts of the donor community. (Rub moved to the Cleveland Art Museum in 2006 and later to the Philadelphia Art Museum.)

Betsky trained as an architect, came to Cincinnati in 2006 from the Netherlands Architecture Institute. He had been in Cincinnati earlier, as a professor at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning.

"We're not just a treasure house," Betsky told the Enquirer on the day in January it was announced he'd step down. "We are a place that is meant to preserve great works of art for future generations, and we do that with great care. But the whole mission of the art museum, which I've tried to get us to really concentrate and focus on, is that we bring people and art together. ... That's really what I've worked very hard at."

Several artistic decisions were controversial, though. Betsky installed the museum's icons in the central Schmidlapp gallery behind black fringe curtains. Another exhibition that irritated many long-time supporters was the recently closed "6,000 Years" -- densely packed and featuring hundreds of items from museum storage. Two favorite curators, Benedict Leca and James Crump, left the museum. And Betsky championed a proposal by Todd Pavlisko that featured a sharpshooter firing bullets down the central Schmidlapp Gallery.

Betsky also oversaw a $13 million renovation of the old Art Academy wing. Museum offices and the library were moved into that space, freeing up room for the education center and future gallery space.

The museum recently began a small renovation project, with a cost of just over $5 million. In this phase, the lobby, cafe and museum store have been renovated and an offsite warehouse added. The opening of an expanded Rosenthal Education Center is about a year away.

Betsky remains in Cincinnati, but his Clifton home is for sale.

After it was announced that Betsky would step down, the museum board named a search committee, then employed consultant Russell Reynolds Associates to assist with the search. Consultants Laurie Nash and Allison Ranney of Russell Reynolds kicked off the search by surveying members, board, staff and shareholders about the museum's needs.

Russell Reynolds simultaneously conducted a search for a new director of the much-larger Cleveland Art Museum. William M. Griswold, previously director of The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, was appointed to the Cleveland position May 20.