Q&A: What Can We Expect From The New DMA Director?
ArtandSeek.net July 16, 2016 21The Dallas Museum of Art just hired a new director. Agustin Arteaga will be the museum’s first Latino director and one of the very few Latinos heading up a major arts organization in North Texas, period. Local All Things Considered host Justin Martin sat down with Art & Seek’s Jerome Weeks to talk about what all this might mean.
Justin Martin: So Arteaga is the DMA’s first Latino director. Is that significant?
First, the Dallas Museum of Art is supposed to be culturally diverse. That’s its mission. It’s not a museum of nothing but European Old Masters. It’s got a terrific African collection, for instance. So hiring someone from outside the United States should fit right in.
Second, Arteaga has serious qualifications. He’s run three art museums in three different cities, Mexico City, Puerto Rico, Buenos Aires. [A fun fact – or a pedantic point, depending on your point of view: Both the Dallas Morning News and The New York Times mistakenly reported that Arteaga’s job at the DMA was his first in the U.S. or ‘the continental U.S.’ Actually, Puerto Rico is officially part of the North American continent — as are all the Caribbean islands — and its citizens are U. S. citizens.] And he’s a proven fundraiser – which the DMA needs after the previous director Maxwell Anderson launched his very ambitious projects.
But I put the whole question of diversity in hiring to Melissa Fetter, the chair of the DMA’s board of trustees – and I should add, she’s also a former chair of KERA.
“We need to be clear that Agustin comes with a resume and a list of qualities that make him exceptional,” she said. “The fact that he is of Mexican descent is an added bonus. But that is not the single reason he was hired.”
What can we expect from him?
What’s more, new arts leaders bring their professional connections with them. A few years after Jaap van Zweden was appointed by the DSO, they hired Alexander Kerr as concertmaster or lead violinist. Just so happens, Kerr followed van Zweden at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. So, in effect, van Zweden was bringing in some of ‘his own people,’ musicians who thought the same way he did about classical performance. Those kinds of hires can slowly change the nature of an arts institution. And whats one ‘re of the first decisions facing Arteaga? Replacing the DMA’s head curator, Olivier Meslay, who’s leaving next month.
Tapping into these kinds of professional connections is precisely one reason Arteaga was hired. Again, Melissa Fetter: “Obviously, with Augustin’s experience in Buenos Aires and Puerto Rico, we think this brings us an opportunity to collaborate with museums in those parts of the world and hopefully bring some new exhibitions.”
OK, so we’ll probably get to see more art from Mexico and Latin America.
So is more art from Mexico and Latin America such a big deal?
So what’d he say?
And Melissa Fetter described hiring Arteaga as a kind of pivot for the DMA – into a more international frame of mind. So yeah, Arteaga may not try to set out to buy a Leonardo da Vinci, the way Maxwell Anderson did, but at the DMA he may prove to be — as they say – a significant agent of change.