A Farewell to Danielle Rice — One of Delaware Arts' Best!

Post courtesy of The Delaware Art Museum

Blogger Note: We wish Dr. Rice the very best in her new endeavors. We are truly sad at her departure from our Delaware Arts circle, but we thank her for her unwavering commitment to invigorate, elevate and promote the Delaware Art Museum and the entire Delaware Arts scene. Thank you, Danielle!  We are so grateful and fortunate to have had you as one of our fearless and dedicated leaders.

The Board of Trustees of the Delaware Art Museum announces the departure of Executive Director Dr. Danielle Rice. Dr. Rice led the Museum for the past eight years. Her departure will be effective September 1, 2013. Mike Miller, the Museum's current Chief Financial Officer, will take the helm as acting Chief Executive Officer while the Board undertakes a national search for a successor to Dr. Rice.
 

Under her leadership, the Museum experienced a virtual rebirth. Shortly after her arrival, Dr. Rice successfully managed the opening of the newly renovated and expanded building, along with the related festivities in June 2005. She initiated a large number of community partnerships and re-established the Museum's image. She also led a strategic planning effort that resulted in a revised mission and tightly focused community-minded goals. In 2007 and 2008 she guided the Museum through the American Alliance of Museums' rigorous re-accreditation process.
 
During her tenure, the Museum hosted several successful major exhibitions and welcomed back the Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art from a world tour into newly designed galleries. In addition to enriching the Museum's collections through major acquisitions of art, including 50 works from the Vogel collection and numerous other gifts, Dr. Rice helped to initiate and launch several innovative uses of technology, including cell phone tours, dedicated websites for John Sloan and the Pre-Raphaelites, and the delightful interactive educational website Art of Storytelling. She led the Museum through its Centennial Celebration, including a wide array of partnerships throughout the state. She also initiated the Centennial Campaign for the Next Century Fund, which has raised over $6.5 million.

Gerret Copeland, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, noted on behalf of the Board, "Danielle has been a great asset to the Museum and to the community. She has made the Museum a place where everyone can feel welcome. We are deeply grateful for her leadership over the past eight years and we wish her all the best in her next adventure."  

Beginning in September 2013, Dr. Rice will assume the position of Director of the Master of Science Program in Museum Leadership at Drexel University's Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. This newly created Master of Science in Museum Leadership program is designed to prepare leaders who will enable museums to fulfill their missions of stewardship and education. The program combines cutting-edge theory, history and practice, and addresses the need for increased diversity in the museum workforce, management, collections, and programs.

See www.delart.org.

Can newspaper photography be art?

A resounding yes if Fred Comegys is holding the camera! Although he protests that he has never thought of it as art, Mr. Comegys’ photographs reveal that he is always looking for the different angle, the grittiness, the photographic statement.


And brava to Executive Director Danielle Rice for deciding to keep to her ‘let’s get local’ theme. The crowd at the opening of the exhibit was very large and many of them were young people who had never been to the Delaware Art Museum before. They filed politely through the very small gallery where curator Heather Coyle Campbell had hung what she had feared would be a very small number of photographs – but finally on Monday, February 4, she received the last of 65 pictures from Mr. Comegys.


At the opening Comegys noted that photojournalists go from one appointment to the next – Wilmington in the morning, Middletown at noon and then some. The mission is speed. The mission is to report. And, as he pointed out with some contrition, the mission is often to catch people when they are not at their best.


Mr. Comegys’ work can even catch people at their worst. His photo of The Rolling Stones at a concert gives Jagger a mean and threatening look – and his several photos of Ku Klux Klan meetings put the spotlight on individual Klansmen with disturbing clarity – one of which is labeled Rev. Dorsett preaching at a Ku Klux Klan Rally, Bear, Delaware, 1965. This is a disturbing photograph.


Yet Comegys can also paint people at their best. Ted Kennedy standing among the nuns and teachers of St. Mark’s High School looks like an angel come to earth. Did you mean that, Fred, or did it just happen?


See www.comegys.com
See www.delart.org
See www.delawareonline.com


Photos: Top, left to right: 1. U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy at St. Mark's High School, Wilmington, 1972. 2. Spiderman in the net, St. Georges Bridge, St. Georges, DE October 1971.
3. Sister Mary Francis tosses a football during recreation period, The Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, Wilmington, Delaware May 1984. Bottom right: Port Deposit, Maryland Flood, June 26, 1972.

A Toast to the Fallen Woman

Danielle Rice, executive director of the Delaware Art Museum, hosted a delightful open discussion about fallen women of the Nineteenth Century and asked the audience why the theme permeated literature, music and art of the time. She started the ball rolling by showing slides of art depicting fallen women. Her first example was William Holdman Hunt’s The awakening conscience since it had been completed in the same year as Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata (the fallen woman). Her partner in leading the discussion was Lee Kimball, general and artistic director of Opera Delaware, who will present La Traviata at the Grand Opera House on November 7, 12 and 13. The two are friends, which made the lively discussion even more fun. Mr. Kimball bravely pointed out that usually it is the fallen woman who gets killed or arrested or punished, while the fallen man tends to walk away with only a few regrets.

After the discussion, the crowd mingled and enjoyed delicious hors d’oeuvres and drinks which they brought to the entrance hall of the museum, where the grand piano was waiting for Jeffrey Miller, chorus master and associate music director of Opera Delaware and Colleen Daly, soprano and Alak Kumar, tenor. The two will be singing the lead roles in La Traviata and if this foretaste in which they sang La Brindisi is any indication, the next time we hear those two could be at Lincoln Center.

The intimacy of the setting, the lively discussion and the informal concert made it feel as if we were attending a party at Barone Douphol’s house watching Alfredo flirt with Violetta in front of her rich lover…

Having had the hors d’oeuvre, my appetite has been whetted for the main course. See you at the Grand.

See www.operade.org