‘A focused and inspiring leader’
Norton Museum names new director to chart its future course.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, made a big splash in 2 010 when it opened its ground breaking Art of the Americas Wing.
The 121,307-square-foot Foster + Partners-designed addition united for the first time items from the entire Western Hemisphere. The number of objects from the Americas on view more than doubled. The installation spanned 900 B.C. to the late 20th century and embraced all media.
The New York Times proclaimed the wing “a wow. Almost a double wow.”
Now the curator who led that drive is coming to the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach as its director and CEO.
Elliot Bostwick Davis will start March 2. She will succeed Hope Alswang, who will retire March 1. Alswang spearheaded the Norton’sg ame-changing Foster + Partners-designed expansion, scheduled to open to the public Feb. 9.
“It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity to work with a new building in a community that has all the pillars for thinking about how to solve the problems facing art museums today,” Davis said.
Among those pillars are financial resources, which enabled the Norton to raise $107 million for the expansion, exceeding its campaign goal by $7 million.
As far as the problems go, they’re ones on the Norton’s radar screen as well — how to attract and best serve a growing and increasingly diverse population.
At the MFA, Davis “has reached out to the community in a variety of expansive ways, using the building itself to enable her to do that,” said Norton board member John Niblack, who led the search committee. “That’s exactly what we want to do at the Norton.”
The expanded Norton will encompass 133,000 square feet, including its new sculpture garden. It will add 12,000 square feet of galleries, increasing the amount of gallery space by 35 percent. Other upgrades include more classrooms, an updated auditorium and a dramatic new entrance facing Dixie Highway.
Davis has headed the Art of the Americas department for 18 years.
“Elliot is a very focused and inspiring leader,” said Matthew Teitelbaum, the MFA’s director. “She articulates goals well and creates teamwork around those goals to achieve success.” She’s also a first-rate fundraiser, he said.
Norton board Chairman Harry Howell added, “She’s smart, talented and driven — all the things we look for in a leader.”
She’s never directed a museum before, but the job doesn’t intimidate her. The transition from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she was an assistant curator for 10 years, to overseeing the Art of the Americas wing, which accounts for a third of the MFA’s gallery space, was a much bigger leap, she said.
Davis, 56, comes from a distinguished family of art philanthropists.
Her great-great-grandmother was Louisine Waldron Havemeyer, who donated thousands of works by Degas, Rembrandt, Monet, Cassatt, Goya and other masters to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her great-grandmother Electra Havemeyer Webb founded the Shelburne Museum in Vermont to house her eclectic collection of American folk art and architecture.
Davis avoids capitalizing on her forebears’ fame but she has followed their example.
“My own guiding principle is to bring the great experiences and good fortune I’ve had by being exposed to great art to as many people as possible,” she said.
Under Davis’ direction, the Art of the Americas department focused on diversifying its collection as it acquired nearly 4,300 works. The African-American art collection grew from three paintings to one of the top three collections of its kind in the nation.
She is leading a project funded by the Henry Luce Foundation to create innovative exhibitions and programs featuring under-studied art from the collection with input from curators, scholars and community members.
Visitor feedback will aid research into ways the arts and humanities can help humanity flourish.
“We know anecdotally that art museums promote flourishing,” she said. “We need to provide the data as to how this may work for people.” She hopes the Norton will be interested in contributing to the research.
She initiated another project with support from Art Bridges Inc. and the Terra Foundation for American Art that involves sharing art with four museums in rural and underserved communities in the Northeast.
Davis and her husband, John Paolella, a wealth management adviser, have two adult sons. He trained as a classical pianist and they both “love all things cultural,” she said.
She has a head start settling in at the Norton, where the couple will occupy the renovated director’s vintage residence adjacent to the museum.
The MFA and the Norton share past and current donors such as Leonard Lauder, Fred and Jean Sharf, and Ruth and Carl Shapiro. Davis was a trustee at the Shelburne Museum, where Alswang and Norton Deputy Director Sam Ankerson once worked. She’s a friend of chief curator Cheryl Brutvan, the MFA’s former contemporary art curator.
She’s also well-acquainted with Palm Beach because her husband’s parents live on the island.
“I’ve watched the Norton grow over the years,” she said. She’ll soon direct the museum after the biggest growth spurt in its 77-year history.