William J. Chiego
| Dr. William J. Chiego | |
|---|---|
| 150px William J. Chiego, Director | |
| Born | September 17, 1943 Newark, NJ |
| Nationality | USA |
| Field | Director |
Education
Chiego received a B.A. in history and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Virginia. He earned a Ph.D. in the history of art from Case Western Reserve University in a joint program with the Cleveland Museum of Art. Chiego has been a resident fellow at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, and a participant in the . He is active in the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and is a former board member of that organization. He has also served as an adjunct professor and lecturer at both Oberlin College and at Trinity University in San Antonio.
Early career
Chiego came to the McNay Art Museum from Oberlin, Ohio, where he served as the director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College from 1986 to 1991. Previously, he had held curatorial posts at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, the Portland Art Museum in Oregon and the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.
McNay Art Museum
Arriving at the McNay Art Museum in 1991, director William J. Chiego is credited with shrewdly building on the strengths of the museum’s original collections and developing new areas of concentration. During his first 20 years as director, the museum’s collection more than doubled from 9,000 to nearly 19,000 works of art, with emphasis on modern sculpture, prints and drawings (particularly Mexican prints), theatre arts, and contemporary works in various media. Bringing in conservators to assess the condition of works, along with a total renovation of the museum’s dated environmental systems, he emphasizes preservation of the art through a comprehensive conservation program with prioritized treatment of individual objects.
McNay Art Museum Expansion
In 1997 Chiego initiated a strategic site and space plan, as it became clear that an impressive exhibition schedule and a growing collection could not coexist without additional space. Once he oversaw the major $7.1 million renovation of the museum’s landmark Spanish Colonial Revival facility in 2001, Chiego, with the museum’s board of trustees, spearheaded the $50 million capital campaign for construction of the . The addition designed by award winning architecht Jean-Paul Viguier, which opened in June 2008, nearly doubled the size of the museum, allowing for year-round installation of significant collection works in the former residence and surrounding additions. The Stieren Center is now the locus for major exhibitions of a greater variety and size, including George Rickey Kinetic Sculpture: A Retrospective; Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker; and George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher.
Exhibitions and Authored Books
Chiego has organized scores of exhibitions and has produced numerous publications. He has written about the French Romantic painters and printmakers Carle Vernet and Théodore Géricault, the Scottish Romantic painter Sir David Wilkie, modern sculpture, and the history of collecting. Among the exhibitions he has organized at the McNay are Auguste Rodin: Selections from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, O’Keeffe and Texas, and retrospectives on San Antonio artists , and . He has overseen several publications which highlight the history of the museum and its areas of collection strength, including Modern Art at The McNay (2001); An Eye for the Stage: The Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts at the McNay Art Museum (2004); From Goya to Johns: Fifty Master Prints at the McNay Art Museum (2004); as well as two new publications, McNay Art Museum: An Introduction (2010) and Jane & Arthur Stieren Center for Exhibitions, McNay Art Museum (2011).
References
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