“I think the sky’s the limit,” the American Folk Art Museum’s newly appointed director Anne-Imelda Radice told ARTINFO over the phone today. “I’m honored that I’ll have this opportunity to work with people that are the highest level and amazingly dedicated to the success of this institution.”
The announcement of Radice’s appointment today comes after a tumultuous year for the institution, whose previous executive director Maria Ann Conelli stepped down in May of 2011 after selling the AFAM’s 10-year-old building on 53rd Street to neighboring MoMA and consolidating the museum’s activities at its much smaller but virtually rent-free space near Lincoln Center. For Radice, though, this slimmed and nimble new AFAM — which recently teamed with the South Street Seaport for the first of what will be many major off-site exhibitions — has distinct advantages.
“I think that one of the reasons that the American Folk Art Museum is in such good condition now with this consolidation was because people worked as a team,” she said.
That team will nevertheless have to be exceptionally careful in its spending after defaulting on its whopping $31.9-million loan last year, a fact of which Radice is well aware. “I watched as the board took on a very difficult situation with total transparency,” she said. “Because we have the expertise, which is the most difficult thing to get, we have to be prudent in the way we develop budgets for projects.” She continued, “I just met the staff for the first time. There is no shortage of ideas — and of course I have a few — but I want to give them a little time to percolate.”
Prior to her appointment Radice served as the director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services under both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and held a variety of positions in educational and cultural government agencies, including the Humanities Endowment and the United States Information Agency. She was also the curator of the U.S. Capitol, an assistant curator at the National Gallery of Art, and the first director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Moving from those major national organizations to the comparatively small AFAM might seem an odd career choice, but Radice sees her new job as an opportunity to extend the museum’s reach. “This is an institution that is a local treasure, a national treasure, and an international treasure,” she said. “And I think it should present itself in that way and be respected in that way.”