From MAK Center to CSLB
Since her second year of architecture school at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the 1980s, Kimberli Meyer was inexplicably drawn to images of the ’20sera Schindler House in West Hollywood. So it’s no surprise she ended up as director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House.
After 14 years steering the organization, Meyer, 55, will move on, the MAK Center said. She will be director of the University Art Museum at Cal State Long Beach.
Under Meyer’s leadership, the MAK Center grew in size and programming. In 2007, it acquired the Fitzpatrick-Leland House, an R.M. Schindler residence in Hollywood Hills West. In 2010, the center added the Garage Top space at the 1939 Mid-Wilshire Mackey Apartments. Exhibitions have included 2010’s “How Many Billboards? Art in Stead” — which Meyer co-curated with Lisa Henry, Nizan Shaked and Gloria Sutton — as well as “Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design,” co-curated with Susan Morgan in 2011 as part of Pacific Standard Time.
“She brought an extra relevance to the programming here,” MAK Center deputy director Anthony Carfello said. “We’ve gone from a place that did two to three shows a year to a place that now has six exhibitions and shorter-run shows and dozens of programs.”
Meyer said she’s particularly interested in Cal State Long Beach because “university museums play an important role as an independent, academic space that really can dig into issues and encourage critical thinking in ways that private museums cannot.”
The MAK Center said it is looking for a new director.