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own nationwide search for a new curator, filling the spot
vacated by Jay Williams, who retired in October.
Roberts first visited the museum 20 years ago, when he
was invited to lecture. It was a much different institution
then, an art museum that came together because local art
lovers felt the community was lacking in cultural vibrancy.
Now, it is a nationally accredited institution with the ability
to mount major exhibitions and bring in complicated works
of art, such as its latest exhibition of Deborah Butterfield’s
life-sized wood, bronze and steel equine sculptures. The museum
attracts 80,000 visitors annually, no small feat for a city
of 15,000.
“I had an understanding that this was not a typical small
town on the Florida coast,” he says. “Nor was the museum
the typical small-town museum. My understanding was
enhanced by spending a lot of time with a number of board
members, and I felt very prepared to come here.”
As chief curator for seven years at the Milwaukee Art
Museum, he organized a major retrospective on Wassily Kandinsky,
the seminal influence of abstraction in art, with the
Centre Pompidou in Paris and was involved in the museum’s
$34 million capital campaign for the museum’s renovation
and reinstallation of its permanent works.
Prior to that, he was chief curator for the Evo Gallery in
Santa Fe, N.M., and curator of modern and contemporary art
at the Phoenix Art Museum, following positions at two Iowa
museums, the Dubuque Museum of Art and the Figge Art
Museum in Davenport.
His plans for the VBMA’s future include instituting programs
that attract the area’s year-round residents. “We have
a very robust program during the season,” he says. “But we
want to make sure that we are reaching out to everyone, to let
them know the museum is here.”
And, while the museum is sound financially — the recent
$10 million campaign brought the museum’s endowment to
$26 million — the museum depends on state funding and is
faced with budget cuts that threaten its outreach and educational
programs.
“What we do reaches so many people in the community,”
he says. “What we offer is important, not frivolous, and
needs to be maintained. That is a primary concern.”
Another focus will be adding to the museum’s permanent
collection.
“It is a young collection with about 1,000 works of late
19th- and early 20th-century American art,” he notes. While
the art market is always competitive, Roberts says, knowing
what will stand the test of time is “the part of the hunt
I enjoy.”
The museum’s major donors involved in the selection of
the museum’s new acquisitions, the Athena Society, will be
traveling this fall to Milan, Italy, and on to the Venice Biennial
to see the latest in international contemporary visual art.
“It’s important to know what is happening internationally,
nationally and regionally, but also to be aware locally,”
he says. With that in mind, he hopes to explore the works of
local artists, including A.E. Backus, the Fort Pierce artist who
is the subject of a new scholarly book, Tropical Light: The Art of
A.E. Backus.
With a background in modern and contemporary art,
Roberts plans to continue to explore works by artists in all
media, including photography and video, media that he sees
as being hallmarks of the 21st century.
“Just as the 15th century was with the invention of oil >>
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