ANNUAL REPORT JULY 1, 2015 – June 30, 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS Mission/History .......................................................3 Executive Director’s Report ...................................5 By the Numbers .........................................................7 Exhibitions .................................................................. 8 Acquisitions ...............................................................11 Programs....................................................................14 Financials ...................................................................16 Board of Trustees .....................................................17 Guild of the KMA ....................................................18 Fundraising Events ..................................................19 Art House ..................................................................21 Annual Donors ........................................................22 25th Anniversary Campaign Donors ................. 37 Staff ............................................................................38 MISSION / The Knoxville Museum of Art celebrates the art and artists of East Tennessee, presents new art and new ideas, educates and serves a diverse community, enhances Knoxville’s quality of life, HISTORY and operates ethically, responsibly, and transparently as a public trust. The KMA’s predecessor, the Dulin Gallery of Art, opened The museum supplements and complements its core in 1961. By the middle 1980s the gallery had outgrown its permanent installations with a lively schedule of temporary quarters in the 1915 Dulin House, a landmark design of John exhibitions that explore aspects of regional culture and its Russell Pope. An ambitious community effort raised $11 relation to national and international artistic developments. million for a state-of-the-art facility overlooking the site of the 1982 World’s Fair in downtown Knoxville. In March Museum tours, workshops, artist residencies, outreach 1990, the Knoxville Museum of Art opened in its current programs, lectures, concerts, classroom programs, and 53,200 square-foot facility designed by renowned American family activities form the core of the museum’s educational architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. The exterior of the four- programming. The KMA reaches over 60,000 annually through story steel and concrete building, named in honor of Jim museum visits, special events, concerts and other programs. Clayton, the largest single contributor to its construction, In addition, thousands attend special events and community is sheathed in locally quarried pink Tennessee marble. celebrations held in the museum’s beautiful public spaces. In the decades since the museum opened, its collection and programming have evolved to become increasingly focused on the rich culture, old and new, of the Southern Appalachians: to “celebrate the art and artists of East Tennessee.” Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in East Tennessee, a permanent exhibition of works from the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth century, spotlights the compelling and heretofore largely unknown visual arts legacy of Knoxville and the region. To this has recently been added a permanent exhibition of In spring 2014 the museum unveiled a permanent, monumental modern and contemporary art: Currents: Recent Art from East glass installation by acclaimed Knoxville artist Richard Jolley, Tennessee and Beyond supports the museum’s parallel aim to a powerful affirmation of the KMA’s commitment to the art “introduce new art and new ideas.” It features a selection and artists of our region. Cycle of Life: Within the Power of of objects from the KMA’s growing collection by emerging Dreams and the Wonder of Infinity, the generous gift of Ann and established artists and represents a chronological and and Steve Bailey, is the largest figural glass installation in geographic expansion of Higher Ground that allows viewers the world. In preparation for the epochal milestone in the to consider the achievements of area artists within a global KMA’s history, the museum underwent a comprehensive, context. Facets of Modern and Contemporary Glass showcase top-to-bottom restoration and renovation at a cost of nearly the KMA’s growing holdings of 20th- and 21st-century glass. $6 million. The museum’s beautiful pink Tennessee marble 3 MISSON / HISTORY (CONT.) cladding has been cleaned and restored. The entry plaza and third floor terrace were demolished, waterproofed, rebuilt, and elegantly repaved with pink and gray Vermont granite. Visitors can now enjoy beautiful new restrooms and pristine new terrazzo floors on the second and third levels; a renovated and functional catering kitchen can better support museum events and outside rentals. The new North Garden has been handsomely articulated with new retaining walls, terraces, and ramps, and planted with native trees, shrubs, and ground cover. These vital repairs and upgrades, made possible by success of the 25th Anniversary Campaign, will ensure the preservation and enjoyment of Edward Larrabee Barnes’ modernist masterpiece as it moves into its second quarter-century. The campaign also supported endowment enhancement and the establishment of a dedicated art acquisition fund. The museum’s approximately $1.8 million annual operating budget comes from individual and corporate donors, museum memberships, rental income, local, state, and federal government grants, endowments, and annual fundraising events organized by the KMA Guild. More than 300 volunteers donate in excess of 15,000 volunteer hours each year. The KMA has operated solidly in the black for more than a decade, and is committed to the highest ethical and professional standards. The KMA was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums in 1996 and reaccredited in 2005 and 2015, a distinction shared by fewer than 10% of American museums. 4 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT At the completion of the 2016 fiscal year on June 30, we are still riding the wave of a period of significant accomplishments at the KMA: a successful capital campaign; the unveiling of Richard Jolley’s Cycle of Life, the world’s largest figural glass installation; the completion of comprehensive building renovations; and the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the museum’s 1990 opening in the landmark Clayton Building. When the museum was reaccredited last summer by the American Alliance of Museums, the Accreditation Commission commended the KMA for “taking a risk and employing a smart strategy to focus its exhibitions and collections on the art and artists of East Tennessee.” Indeed, that focus on local and regional content has driven the museum’s strategic direction and strongly connected the KMA to the community. Since the 2008 opening of Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in East Tennessee, the KMA has acquired close to 200 works by artists from or working in our part of the world, largely through gifts, and we continue to discover new artists from our area or artists with strong ties to the region. The Knoxville 7 exhibition that opened in January 2016 was just one of the many exciting developments that have grown out of the KMA’s commitment to homegrown visual traditions. That exhibition demonstrated dramatically that, far from being an artistic backwater, Beauford Delaney, Scattered Light Knoxville was a vital, confident, and sophisticated art center in the 1950s and 1960s, conversant with national and international trends, last few decades of his life. We hope eventually to bring some just as it had been in the early twentieth century and is again today. those works to Knoxville and are looking at other ways we can Nearly half of the works displayed came from the KMA collection, promote the legacy of this vitally important world cultural figure. and several generous owners of Knoxville 7 material were inspired by We have enlisted the help and support of the Museum of East the exhibition to enrich further the museum’s holdings in this area. Tennessee History and Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Knoxville’s African-American history museum, which in June hosted the Knoxville native Beauford Delaney represents another fascinating rollout of the Beauford Delaney Project for an overflow crowd. chapter of our region’s rich artistic legacy. In terms of national The KMA Collectors Circle wrapped up another successful year and international reputation, and his place in the mainstream of acquiring two important pastel portraits, of Beauford’s mother, American and European modernism, Beauford is arguably the most Delia, and his friend Dante Pavone, for the KMA collection. important artist Knoxville ever produced. For the past several years the museum has dedicated itself to building its holdings of works The permanent exhibition Currents: Recent Art from East Tennessee by Beauford, which are hard to come by and expensive. Thanks to and Beyond brings the story told by Higher Ground up to today and the support of the Aslan Foundation, the KMA Collectors Circle, presents our region’s visual culture in the context of national and and other generous donors, visitors can now enjoy a representative international developments. That context was greatly enriched sampling of his output in Higher Ground. In February, KMA Curator this year by the gift of 38 important contemporary prints from Stephen Wicks and I, along with a contingent of museum trustees Chicago collectors Helen and Russel Novak. Richard Jolley’s and friends, attended the opening of an exhibition of Beauford’s