Wanted: another truly great director

VMFA Director Dr. R. Peter Mooz was photographed by the Richmond Times-Dispatch during his tenure as director in the late 1970s.

During my 32 years at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, I never had the chance to work for a truly great museum director. I worked for a couple of good ones, but never one who could truthfully be called remarkable.

As far as I can tell, Leslie Cheek Jr. was the only bang-up director in VMFA's history. His tenure stretched from the post-World War II era to the late 1960s. He elevated the museum from local to regional stature through a wily combination of elitism, perfectionism, timing, imagination, a dogged cultivation of potential donors, sheer determination, and his own privileged upbringing.

During his reign, the museum's holdings in European art were significantly augmented by bequests from wealthy patrons. Another crucial acquisition was the purchase of more than 150 Indian and Himalayan paintings, sculptures and decorative objects, which became the seed of a South Asian collection that now ranks among the best in the world. In 1954, he proudly opened the museum's first wing. In addition to providing badly needed gallery space, the addition included a 530-seat, state-of-the-art theatre, the first to be housed in an American fine arts museum. He pioneered VMFA's Artmobile program, sending paintings and sculpture across the state in an 18-wheeler. More important, he led the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in setting the agenda for Virginia's social and cultural aristocracy.

VMFA has not seen his likes since.

Dr. R. Peter Mooz, VMFA's fourth director, was running the museum when I was hired in 1978. He hired me when I was still "radioactive" in the world of Richmond journalism, thanks to the Byrd incident that led to my termination at WTVR TV. I was grateful to Peter for giving me a job. But the charm he radiated at first blush soon wore thin -- to me and, more significant, to the museum's board of trustees and top-level staff.

Things came to a head in the late spring of 1981. On June 10, Peter was relieved of his duties, effective immediately, during a two-hour closed-door session of the board's executive committee. I sat in on portions of the session and drafted the statement that was released to the media immediately afterward.

Controversy -- anathema to the museum's board, dominated by moneyed and politically powerful Virginians -- had dogged Peter since the beginning of his tenure in 1976. He fought with state government leaders and with his own staff. He engineered a number of controversial art purchases, including the acquisition of a George Caleb Bingham painting that had been discovered hanging on the wall of a funeral parlor in the Midwest. So much restoration work had been done to the painting that one independent art historian said it was as much the work of a conservator as of the original artist. The Times-Dispatch reported that the museum paid $225,000 (about $633,000 in today's dollars) for it.

In 1981 -- while the chief curator was out of the country on business -- Peter tried to put together a $2 million deal for six European paintings. The trustees, acting on the advice of the chief curator, blocked the deal. On June 10, while Peter was in Indianapolis at a conference of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), the trustee executive committee lowered the boom. On the table in front of each member as they met in a conference room off of the museum's lobby was a copy of the AAMD's booklet "Professional Practices in Art Museums." The booklet includes a chapter on the code of ethics for museum directors as well as information on how the firing of a museum director should be handled.

The executive committee's decision was unanimous. At 6:25 p.m., Peter ceased to be director and his tumultuous reign ended. The trustees asked me to draft a statement for the media. A half-hour later, the president of the board approved what I had written, and I released it to the reporters who had waited in the lobby.

For the next year or so, Charlie Reed, the board's president, ran the museum as chairman of a staff operations committee. Very few major initiatives were undertaken, but the mood of the museum was lightened considerably and for the time being an era of good feeling prevailed.

(The contemporaneous work of Times-Dispatch arts writer and critic Bob Merritt and News Leader arts writer Barbara Green was helpful in refreshing my memory of these events of nearly 30 years ago.)