A Yale museum looks beyond university walls

Director Reynolds revels in all phases of job

Under Jock Reynolds, the Yale gallery's collection has more than doubled. (courtesy of yale university art gallery)

NEW HAVEN - In September, Jock Reynolds marks his 10th anniversary as Henry J. Heinz II director of the Yale University Art Gallery. During that time, the collection has more than doubled, to some 190,000 objects. The gallery's Louis Kahn-designed building reopened in 2006 after a three-year, $44 million renovation. That was part of a 12-year expansion and renovation of the gallery's overall facilities expected to finish in 2011.

Reynolds, 61, has been executive director of the Washington Project for the Arts, in Washington, D.C., and director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, in Andover.

Last week, he spoke with Globe staffer Mark Feeney about the challenges facing Yale and university and college art museums generally. What follows is an edited version of their conversation.

Q. What's the status of the renovation?

A. We basically said we're going to really get this program and collection in great shape and we're going to do bricks and mortar. But we're not going to do bricks and mortar at the expense of the other. As a matter of fact, we raised more money - and exceeded our goals - for endowing curators and staff and programming faster than we raised for bricks and mortar, which I think is entirely appropriate. It's kind of counter to what you see in many places, where they build a big edifice then don't have the money to run it.

Q. How important is it for the museum to reach out beyond the Yale community?

A. Well, one of the things that attracted me to this job is that the arts were one of the first places where New Haven and Yale had this town-gown thing get richer and more interesting. I think it's no accident that New Haven right now has rebuilt itself around this whole downtown arts and culture district.

Yale is very different from the history of the Harvard art museums in the sense that Harvard always had the Museum of Fine Arts, this big civic institution, to handle civic needs and services, whereas Yale has always done both. I think that's been a very healthy thing. I'm not demeaning Harvard, which is becoming more outwardly directed.

Q. Though Harvard, despite its endowment, has the gall to charge admission to its museums.

A. We're completely free. And Mr. [Paul] Mellon, when he gave this last big gift, included in a codicil that Yale could never charge admission. We're free, free, free. Our board members love the idea that this place is free. They love the idea that Yale doesn't treat itself as just a rich institution that keeps these resources just to itself.

Q. How has the role of the university art museum changed? Is it what the public art museums used to be?

A. One of the things that is especially interesting about university and college art museums is that they can also provide something that a lot of big-city museums find harder to: They can open their collections more directly, physically, on an ongoing basis.

I feel very strongly, and I think a lot of museum curators and directors do, that simply to have a lot of art but not to be able to share it or teach with it is almost irresponsible. Why just have all this stuff and say we have these hundreds of thousands of things and you can't really use them? Basically, it's like keeping them entombed.

Q. Do you find that makes college art museums more attractive to donors?

A. Oh yeah. True and ready access to collections would inspire anyone, no matter what it is you have. You [as a donor] want to give something away, and it's something you love and you've lived with; you don't want it to be just put in a closet and not used. You want that object to have an ongoing life that will inspire someone else.

Direct accessibility is not necessarily in the mission in quite the same way for a museum like the Metropolitan or a big civic museum, as it is for a museum at Yale or Harvard or Smith or Mount Holyoke, an institution where the teaching mission is really tied to the collecting mission. Where we've taken real pleasure here in recent years is to put that educational mission and the artistic mission on a truly equal plane.

Q. What's your favorite part of the job - and least favorite?

A. God, I like it all, to tell you the truth. Maybe I'm a little unusual in that I like the fund-raising side of it. Fund-raising is not as complicated as people make it out to be. It's really pretty simple, if you learn the true interests and passions of the people who want to support the school. Many people want to, and need to, give away money. They would much rather give to something they're excited about and love that advances values and things they believe in.

Q. If not fund-raising, what's been the biggest challenge?

A. The toughest part of this job has been the concentrated focus on how to keep all these people and artworks and stuff moving around while all this very complex set of renovation plans was being developed and pursued. People come in and say, "God, the Kahn building's fabulous!" We say, "Just wait: We'll open all this up toward the end of 2011."

Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.