Maxwell Anderson, Dallas Museum Of Art Director, Joining New Cities Foundation

Maxwell Anderson, who’s been director of the Dallas Museum of Art since 2012, is leaving to join the New Cities Foundation.

The Dallas Museum of Art announced the news in a press release late Monday morning. Anderson has updated his resume to show the job change.

Anderson will become the director of grant programs at the New Cities Foundation in New York City.

Maxwell Anderson in 2013. Photo/Jerome Weeks

Walter Elcock, president of the museum’s board of trustees, will serve as interim director. Catherine Rose, the board’s vice president, will serve as interim president. The museum says Anderson will act as a consultant to the DMA during the transition.

The New Cities Foundation announced the news on its website:

The New Cities Foundation is pleased to welcome Maxwell Anderson as Director of Grant Programs. A veteran art museum curator and director, most recently of the Dallas Museum of Art, Max will help develop ways of supporting NCF’S focus on urban innovation, with a particular emphasis on how digital platforms can improve the lives of city dwellers internationally. He will also assist the Foundation’s affiliate GCDN (the Global Cultural Districts Network) along with other endeavors to improve the quality of urban life through strategic investments, advocacy, and foundation alliances. A former NCF trustee, he has a Ph.D. in art history from Harvard University and extensive experience in international affairs within the cultural sector, along with multiple achievements in harnessing digital media for community engagement, corporate transparency, and mission-focused communications.

The Dallas Museum of Art has yet to announce the news, but Anderson has updated his resume to show the job change.

The New Cities Foundation held its New Cities Summit in Dallas in June 2014.

D Magazine has more details:

If Anderson has resigned, it comes amid a long string of prominent resignations at the museum. Over the past two years, there has been turnover of senior officials in virtually every department of the museum. Critics have also questioned Anderson’s priorities as director of the DMA, and rumors about low museum morale, crimped curatorial budgets, and turmoil in the development department have swirled around the museum for years.

Anderson career highlights

Here’s part of Anderson’s bio on his website:

Beginning with his first museum directorship in 1987, Maxwell L. Anderson pursued solutions to challenges facing art museums internationally. In 1988 as director of the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University (1987-1995), he inaugurated a series of loan projects highlighting unpublished treasures from the storerooms of some of the world’s leading museums in London, Paris, Rome, Mexico City, and elsewhere, looking for alternatives to buying antiquities from the illicit trade. As director of the Whitney Museum of American Art (1998-2003) he initiated the first multinational art purchase, a work by Bill Viola today jointly owned by the Whitney Museum, the Pompidou, and the Tate, to cope with the large scale of many contemporary artworks in variable media.