JUMPING AT THE CHANCE
When he heard the AGO needed a new boss, Stephan Jost didn’t exactly sit back and wait for an offer,
Stephan Jost did not sit back and wait for the search committee, or its hired search firm, to call and invite him to enter the race to become the Art Gallery of Ontario’s next CEO.
“I approached them,” Jost said Wednesday, just after the gallery announced he has been chosen to fill the job vacated by Matthew Teitelbaum last spring.
“An opportunity like this comes along once in 20 years,” Jost said. “I had to get in or wait for 20 years.”
That was the beginning of a long getting-to-know-you courtship period that involved several trips to To- ronto for Jost, who has been the director of the Honolulu Museum of Art since 2011.
Before that, Jost was director of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont and the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, Calif. The AGO has been in search mode since Teitelbaum was named director of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
“We believe Stephan is the perfect fit for the AGO,” said Maxine Granovsky Gluskin, who is president of the AGO board of trustees as well as chair of the search committee and a key player on the interim management team.
He wasn’t an obvious contender. Hawaii is a long way from Toronto, and the Honolulu Museum of Art is much smaller than the AGO, which is one of the largest art museums in North America.
Jost, 47, grew up in East Lansing, Mich., and is a citizen of both the U.S. and Switzerland.
His father, a professor at Michigan State University, and his mother, a ceramic artist, settled there after emigrating from Switzerland.
But the new boss has notable links to Canada.
His husband, Will Scott, is a Toronto-born educator and a Canadian citizen. The couple were married in Toronto 10 years ago, and they have a 5-year-old daughter who is also Canadian.
Those Canadian connections may help fast-track the government immigration process, a hurdle that must be cleared before Jost can reside and work on this side of the border.
His plan is to move into his new office at the AGO in mid-April.