New Art Museum director: Top priority is education

• You can find Kitchin on Twitter at @Cameron_Kitchin.

Incoming Cincinnati Art Museum director Cameron Kitchin stressed in an interview Friday that the museum must be a public service organization, not just an arts organization.

"The highest and best calling for a museum director is to press the agenda for public interface and for education and engagement," Kitchin said. "Those are the things that need a strong push from the directorial position."

Kitchin was named the museum's ninth director in its 132 years on July 29, succeeding Aaron Betsky. He starts Oct. 1.

He made no public appearances at the time of his announcement but is in Cincinnati this weekend for meetings and house-hunting with his wife, Katie, and agreed to an interview with the Enquirer on Friday.

"Yes, we're an arts organization, but I didn't say a public service arts organization," Kitchin said. "We're a public service organization. We exist solely for the benefit of others.

"Our method of public service is in the arts but fundamentally it's a public service. ... We're going to infuse it with everything we do. ... The public service mission of the museum will be coming more and more clear going forward."

Earlier in the day, he had visited Silverton Paideia Academy to speak to second- and sixth-graders there, reinforcing that education was a top priority.

"I was given a great gift of visiting art museums in New York, and when traveling, as a child, a very young child," Kitchin said. "So the museum always felt for me like it was a place for me, it was a home. When I would see the front door, I would say, 'That front door is a door for me to go through.' There was no barrier.

"My life's work has been trying to open those doors for others in the same way they were open for me," Kitchin said. "If I can do that, I can go home at night as a happy director."

Here is some of what Kitchin had to say about Cincinnati and his future ambitions for the art museum:

What attracted him to the job: "I've always admired the Cincinnati Art Museum for its long history, for how early the museum was founded, the westward expansion and the ambition that comes along with that. That translates to size of collection, the feeling that the museum can do anything, that the sky's the limit for the museum, and the expectation from the community that that's how the museum would behave. ... That's a great underpinning for success."

What attracted him to Cincinnati: "Cincinnati is one of those places I've always had a great feeling about the community, the community appreciating itself, and the community feeling that Cincinnati was a positive place. From my standpoint it feels like Cincinnati has a strong sense of place, a strong ownership of its own results. All those things lead to looking at the metrics of the museum and the support the museum enjoys, and they connect. ... We began a process, almost a romance, of thinking about Cincinnati as a partner for me and my family, for Katie and the kids."

His ambitions for the art museum: "The Cincinnati Art Museum has the great potential – and has been so successful in years past – of being a true community institution, of being a hub from which all of the other art forms and other arts organizations in Cincinnati succeed. It is the bedrock of the cultural life of the city. And that means getting more involved, more heavily intersected with the community life of our city. The museum, I think, has done a wonderful job over the years of becoming a universal asset. ... But that universality now needs to translate into a more proactive approach, and putting ourselves in the pathways of people's lives in Cincinnati. ... We simply have to have the will to do it."

Early priorities and strategy: "The very first is to meet and know our staff ... and all of the good work that's being done by our staff and begin to know our own institution. ... That process has only just begun." He'll connect with supporters of the museum ("there are enormous opportunities to engage more deeply with many"), then begin to learn more about the rest of the arts community. "We're not in an enormous hurry. I'm coming to Cincinnati to settle in and raise our family here," Kitchin said.

Strengthening connections outside the museum: "I'm going to make a very strong push in Cincinnati towards partnership." He means not just with the Taft Museum of Art and Contemporary Arts Center – which he hopes will be key partners – but also in the realm of education, social services and city planning. "The art component for those can be led by the art museum," Kitchin said. "I will put myself forward to be a voice in that."

Museum funding: "If we're doing our work well, that's fundraising." Kitchin said he has always worked at museums that had to raise a big percentage of their operating budgets each year. In Cincinnati, he believes he's got a strong base from which to work. "Support for arts is accepted, encouraged and reinforced," he said.

The museum's collection: He recognizes the museum's strength in ceramics and art of the region and notes its "jewel box" collection of antiquities, along with a strong collection of European painters. (The Van Gogh masterpiece "Undergrowth with Two Figures," 1890 is probably the museum's most visited piece.) He believes that while the collection of American painters is a strength, he said there are still holes to fill.

A favorite painting from the collection: "I love the (John Singer) Sargent ('A Venetian Woman,' 1882). I think it has enormous presence. ... It's going to quickly become one of my places of solace."

Acquisition strategy: Much of the art museum's approximately $87 million endowment is set aside for acquisitions. "Each of our curators has a plan of developing the collection that adds up to an overall collection and development plan. All of our strategic planning at the museum will, in time, be something we'll want to take on as a new museum team. It won't hold us back in acquisitions but initially my focus will be on the education and exhibitions development pieces. I want to make sure those are solid, and then we can begin to think about where those endowments take us in terms of acquisitions for the collection. I need a little time – not a lot, just a little time – to examine our own institution and to sort through what will be the smartest and highest impact acquisitions for the museum."

Future exhibitions: "The museum's ambitions should be commensurate with the quality of the collection we have and that means they should be high. We will push to bring exhibitions of the caliber that Cincinnatians deserve. ... When we're thinking about an encyclopedic collection, it's as important for us to explore antiquities as it is for us to explore Impressionism. And that means a balance. There are different cost structures and feasibilities with each of these areas of collecting and loans.

"I think the projects already in the initial phase of development for the museum already push us to a heightened level. The pathway forward looks good. I'll be pushing in some new areas within exhibitions development."

He expects to look at what the museum can leverage from its permanent collection, along with more traveling exhibitions. The museum is working on a project, still to be announced, with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. (The Taft Museum also has a project in the works with the Van Gogh Museum, scheduled for 2016.)

The importance of art scholarship: "When I look at what exhibitions we will mount, one of the lenses I'm going to look at is: 'Does this provide a new angle or a new depth of scholarship?' " Publishing will continue to be important, he said. Sometimes original scholarship will be in the field of education, he said, through exhibitions that allow the museum to explore new methods of teaching.