Harvard selects a new art museum director

For Smithsonian's Lentz, appointment is a homecoming

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff, 10/4/2003

Thomas W. Lentz, named yesterday as the new director of the Harvard Art Museums, said that he will pick up where his predecessor left off. Speaking from the Smithsonian, where he's director of international museums, Lentz said he knows the university's museums need to be modernized and expanded. He also realizes he'll need to raise money to continue former director James Cuno's work to strengthen the curatorial staff.

"It's an extraordinary place, when you think about the enormous strengths there -- the collections, the staff, the very rich legacy of scholarship, and on top of that, it's not connected to just any university," said Lentz, 52. "But just to state the obvious, they have their own set of challenges."

At Harvard, where he starts work Nov. 15, curators said yesterday they are pleased with Lentz's hiring. Some of them have known him for years, since he earned his doctorate at the university in 1985. Others are familiar with his work as an authority in Persian painting.

Museum leaders outside Harvard also praised the appointment. They said that Harvard's choice for the position is known not only for his work as a scholar but for his approachable style.

"Tom has been on everybody's radar screen now for a decade as a potential museum director," said Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. "I think he had the discipline to wait for a position that fit him ideally."

Lentz inherits a rich system from Cuno, who left last year to become director of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Harvard's collection -- housed at the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, and the Sackler -- is unmatched in the world of university museums. The size of its collection ranks eighth among all museums in the country. The museums have a $350 million endowment, a $20 million annual operating budget, and a staff of 268. (At the Smithsonian, in Washington, D.C., Lentz oversees five museums with a $38 million budget and 312 staffers.)

Cuno was frustrated, though, that he couldn't build a museum, being designed by the renowned architect Renzo Piano, along the Charles River -- Harvard backed away from the plan in the face of fierce neighborhood opposition. Cuno had also hoped to renovate the Fogg, where the galleries aren't climate-controlled, making it hard for Harvard to borrow from other museums.

Lentz isn't prepared to offer immediate solutions to those problems. But he does recognize the need to look through the proposals Cuno helped prepare.

"I've got to carefully study the work that's obviously been done and begin to identify and evaluate a series of solutions to those problems," said Lentz. "These are, by their nature, sort of long, collaborative exercises. When I sit down there, there are going to be a lot of smart people around the table."

For Lentz, the job represents a homecoming. While studying at Harvard in the '80s, he got to know two other graduate students, Cuno and Lowry. In August, when offered the job by Harvard, Lentz asked both men for advice. Before coming east, Lentz earned his bachelor's degree in art history in 1975 at Claremont Men's College in his native California. He took time off afterward, working as a house painter and washing dishes at an Indian restaurant, before earning his master's degree in Near Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

After Harvard, Lentz worked as a curator at the Rhode Island School of Design and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Smithsonian hired him in 1992. Until Harvard's offer, Lentz said that he figured he would probably end up returning to the West Coast because much of his family lives there. But Lentz, who is married but has no children, knew the Harvard job would be hard to pass up.

From the university's perspective, Lentz was an ideal candidate because of a rare combination of professional experience and personal style. He also understood the mission of the museums.

"I personally didn't want a museum director that would come and try to transform the Fogg into a big enterprise worrying about blockbusters and attendance," said Yve-Alain Bois, a professor of modern art at Harvard. "That's not what this museum should be."

Paul Thompson, director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, said that Lentz would be missed, and not only for his scholarship.

"He's not one of the kind of chest-beating egos," said Thompson. "He's a charming, charming individual. Museums are as much about people as they are about objects, and those who succeed are those who are good with people and objects. Tom is a terrific scholar. He's also a terrific people person. My board will be devastated to learn this news."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com