Perspectives on Museum Reopenings
Monday, November 23, 12:00PM EST
Join us for a panel discussion with Lynn Gumpert, Director, Grey Art Gallery; Cindy Caplan, Chief Counsel & Talent Officer, The Jewish Museum; and Jason Busch, Director and Chief Executive Officer, American Folk Art Museum; joined and moderated by POWarts Steering Committee member Molly Kurzius, Director of External Affairs, MoMA PS1. The group will discuss their paths to reopening (or decision to remain closed), management shifts, creative fundraising and programmatic initiatives, and what comes next as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
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Lynn Gumpert has been Director of the Grey Art Gallery, New York University’s fine arts museum, since 1997. Among the more than seventy exhibitions she has overseen at the Grey are Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection (2019); The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (2018); Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965 (2017); Global/Local 1960–2015: Six Artists from Iran (2016); Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera (2015); The Poetics of Cloth: African Textiles / Recent Art (2008); The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984 (2006); and Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography, A Project by Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari (2005). She previously worked as a writer, consultant, and independent curator, organizing shows in New York, Japan, and France. From 1980 to 1988 she was curator and senior curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. She authored the first major monograph on French artist Christian Boltanski (Flammarion, 1992) and has contributed essays to numerous publications. In June 1999 Ms. Gumpert was honored by the French government with the distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Cindy Caplan is Chief Counsel & Talent Officer at the Jewish Museum, responsible for all legal matters and for recruiting and developing the Museum’s talented staff. Cindy is an experienced attorney who has focused her career on media and cultural institutions, including working in the Counsel’s office at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cindy grew up in Montreal, Canada where she earned her law degrees from McGill University.
Jason T. Busch is Director and Chief Executive Officer of the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) in New York. He has several decades of experience working in the arts. Prior to AFAM, Busch served as curator of decorative arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford and the Minneapolis Institute of Art; chief curator and curator of decorative arts and design at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; deputy director for curatorial affairs and museum programs at the Saint Louis Art Museum; division director for decorative arts at Sotheby’s; and director of the Jason Jacques Gallery in New York. He has curated several large exhibitions and collection installations and authored the associated publications, including Currents of Change: Art and Life Along the Mississippi River, 1850–1861 (2004); Carnegie Museum of Art: Decorative Arts and Design Collection (2009) and Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 (2012). Busch received his Master of Arts (MA) degree from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware and Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in American Studies from Miami University in Ohio. He has also studied at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and Historic Deerfield, and was a 2013 fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York. Busch is an academic member of the American Folk Art Society, a member of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and on the Advisory Board of the College of Creative Arts at Miami University.