Dan's Papers - February 15, 2008 - Terrie Sultan

"The Parrish is a museum with strong local ties that is going to be expanding to a global outreach. That's a big audacious goal, but one I'm sure we can achieve," said Terrie Sultan, recently appointed director of the Parrish Art Museum.

That global outreach will include a traveling exhibition program, which the Parrish has never instituted on a large scale, she said.

"I want to get the museum's word out to a broader audience so we can share our scholarship with other institutions across the country. This is very easily doable for the Parrish," said Sultan last week in an interview from her home in Houston. She formally steps into the job April 1.

After an exhaustive search for a director by the museum's Board of Trustees, Sultan was appointed as the new director in January. After a recruiter contacted her about the job possibility, she said she was "happy to throw her hat in the ring." (She succeeds Trudy C. Kramer, who announced her retirement a year ago after 26 years as director.)

Sultan received a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree at Syracuse University and a Masters in Museum Studies at John F. Kennedy University and attended the Museum Leadership Institute of the Getty Center. She has served in senior positions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and most recently at the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston. As director of the Blaffer Gallery since 2000, Ms. Sultan reorganized the artistic direction of the exhibition, publication and education program, organizing exhibitions (many of them traveling to other institutions) such as "Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration," co-founded a new university-wide interdisciplinary center for the arts with a $20 million endowment fund, undertook a citywide outreach program that dramatically increased attendance and corporate foundation and individual support, and implemented a new five-year, $20 million strategic plan for expansion and renovation.

No stranger to the Hamptons, Sultan has spent vacations here for the past 15 to 20 years, visiting her brother Donald Sultan of Sag Harbor. Over the years, she said she has built up a network of friends here, so the big move from Houston will be like coming to a second home. As a museum professional, she is attracted to the area because of the density of artists with ties to the community.

"I don't mean just the visual artist. There's a whole community of writers, theater people and artists who cover all aspects of creativity. I'm hoping to tap into those artists as part of my job," she said, adding that she finds the area unique. "There are not too many communities that have this density of people in the arts in an open and relaxed atmosphere."

Part of Sultan's job will be to oversee the construction of a new Parrish Art Museum, which will be located in Water Mill. The Herzog & de Meuron design includes a network of light-infused galleries on 14 acres, evoking the kind of artists' colonies that once flourished on the East End.

The Parrish Art Museum's design concept for its new facility, created by internationally celebrated architects Herzog & de Meuron, will be comprised of a 64,000-square-foot facility, part of a 79,000-square-foot master plan that will be completed in phases, and vastly improve the museum's resources for exhibitions and public programming. Phase I will include 15,405 square feet of gallery space. At the end of phase II, the gallery space will increase to a total of 18,933 square feet on the site.

In addition to managing the $70 million building project, Sultan will also oversee the curatorial programs, educational programs and the day-to-day activities of the museum.

"I've been a museum professional for 20 years, have a strong curatorial background, and I believe I have demonstrated management skills. I'm a good planner and I love a challenge," said Sultan.

She is currently working with the Parrish's Board of Trustees on a transition plan. "I'm in the process of formulating my 100-day plan. I'm reading many documents to bring me up to speed, and I'm studying the museum's existing strategic plan," she said.

As a professional, Sultan is vastly curious about the creative process and believes the new museum's design will reflect that.

"In the contemporary world, a lot of attention and conversation seems to be about the physical object of art, especially as it relates to commerce. I'm dedicated to the art object, too - the painting, the sculpture, the photograph - and believe these works can be transformative. But the other thing I'm interested in is the artists' process. You have an artist who walks into their studio and creates something out of nothing. I'm interested the things that cause the artist to make certain decisions during the creative process," Sultan said.

Her husband, Christopher French, an artist and writer, shares her excitement about the creative process, and writes articles about art in publications such as Art News and Flash Art. He also shows his visual work at a number of Houston venues.

"My work conflates the sensibility of touch with the immediacy of sight, creating the interplays between gesture and order, individuality and anonymity that I think are at the heart of contemporary identity," he wrote on his website.

"Both my husband and I are looking forward to being contributing members of this vibrant community," Sultan said.

Sultan and French have been married for 20 years. They met when both were working at the Oakland Museum in California. One of Sultan's duties there was to edit a magazine for the museum and, admiring French's writing in art publications, hired him to write an article for the magazine. "And the rest is history," she said.

Alvin Chereskin, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Parrish, welcomed Sultan to her new home and said he is delighted to have her on board.

"We are extraordinarily fortunate to have secured Terrie Sultan's leadership at a moment of unprecedented growth and opportunity for this Museum," said Chereskin.. "She brings to the Parrish a rare combination of curatorial acumen, managerial expertise and dedication to education and community service. We look forward eagerly to working with Terrie in the coming years."

And Sultan echoes that enthusiasm. "It is an honor to have been selected as the new director of The Parrish Art Museum," she said. "The Parrish is unique among American museums, with a distinctive collection and a strong program that is closely allied with Long Island's East End and the artists who have worked there. With the support and collaboration of the staff and trustees, I look forward to building on the museum's remarkable history to move the Parrish into the future."