Can Fine Arts Museums replace Colin Bailey?
The departure of Colin Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco since June 2013, to become director of the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan. throws FAMSF back into a quandary, if not a crisis, of leadership.
FAMSF took more than two years to replace the late John Buchanan (1953-2011), its previous director, known more for audience expansion, and internally for punctilious administration, than for intellectual standing.
Bailey, an internationally recognized scholar of 18th century French art and of 19th century Impressionist Auguste Renoir, began to restore it from the moment of his appointment.
[...] the choice of a new director cannot be rushed, but at least a faint shadow of embarrassment will fall on the FAMSF if it remains leaderless when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Berkeley Art Museum, both shuttered at present, reopen in 2016.
Most museum directors who change jobs in less than two years’ time leave under a cloud of dissension or discontent, but Bailey told The Chronicle by phone that he had not been looking for a job elsewhere.
A couple of those conversations were occasioned by small exhibitions he had arranged built around a single object, such as the “Schiava Turca” by Parmagianino (1503-1540), thanks to a reciprocal loan agreement with the Galleria Nazionale di Parma.
“I’m happy for Colin because I know (the Morgan position) is his dream job, but sad for our institution,” said Diane B. Wilsey, chair of the FAMSF board, also reached by phone.
Yet it is one of the Northeast’s pre-eminent cultural treasure houses, on the intimate scale of the Frick Collection, where Bailey served as a senior curator.
Asked about the prospect of future collaborations between the FAMSF and the Morgan Library, Bailey said “that would be fantastic,” and mentioned the depth of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the FAMSF’s prints and drawings department.
The Morgan Library has great riches of graphic arts, in addition to the epochal collection of rare books and musical manuscripts on which J. Pierpont Morgan founded the institution in 1906.