Mitchell Kahan announced Monday he will leave the top job at the Akron Art Museum on Jan. 2.
Kahan, 61, said he would turn to other interests: managing foundations, writing about the arts, and his own oil and acrylic painting.
He has led the museum for 26 years as its longest-serving director.
“This is our 90th anniversary year and we right now have one of the most important artists on view and I thought, ‘Let’s go out on a high note,’ ” Kahan said.
Fred Bidwell, president of the museum’s board of trustees, praised Kahan.
“Without exaggeration, he has been responsible for a transformation of the museum,” Bidwell said. “When he came here it was much smaller, much humbler. He helped give it direction.”
Kahan came to Akron in 1986 from the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, where he was curator of American and contemporary collections. He went on to expand the Akron museum in virtually every aspect.
He helped shape the museum’s modern art collection — defined as dating from 1850 on — and spearheaded the fundraising for a permanent endowment of $20 million.
The museum takes about $250,000 from the endowment each year to buy art, building a collection that has grown from 2,000 objects when he came to Akron to 5,000 today.
A high-water mark was the expansion of the museum from 25,000 square feet to 83,000 square feet in 2007. Kahan oversaw an edgy extension that included a 300-foot “roof cloud” that extends like wings over the original building, a former post office built in 1899.
He said that working with architect Wolf Prix of the Viennese company Coop Himmelb(l)au was the biggest and most rewarding challenge of his career.
“It was such an ambitious project,” Kahan said.
Supporters raised $44.8 million, $36 million for the expansion and the rest for the endowment. The museum paid off the construction loan just 30 months after the doors opened.
The fundraising success showed that “Akron can be a leader in culture,” Kahan told the Beacon Journal at the time.
This spring, Kahan made national headlines again when he sent a prized photo to Christie’s in New York City for auction.
The $2.88 million sale of Untitled 96 by contemporary photographer Cindy Sherman more than doubled the Akron Art Museum’s acquisition fund of $1.8 million.
“We’ll be using some of that money to buy more work by Cindy Sherman, focusing on more unusual pieces,” he said.
Currently, the museum is showing large works by El Anatsui of Ghana, who uses found materials such as printing plates and liquor bottle caps.
Bidwell said it was “one of the most important art shows in the nation this summer.”
It’s originating here because the Akron Art Museum was the first museum in North America to buy an El Anatsui work, and that was because of Kahan’s foresight, Bidwell said.
Along the way, Kahan’s salary rose from $106,000 in 2002 to $153,000 in 2010, according to public records.
His personal interests have been wide — everything from architectural history to art criticism, photography and video art. He has a doctorate from the City University of New York.
He said he will continue to live in Akron with his partner, Christopher Hixson.
Bidwell, the board president, said trustees may hire a firm to find Kahan’s replacement and would aim to have a new director on staff in a year or so.
The museum also announced Monday that Janice Driesbach will be its new chief curator. A native of Lakewood, she studied for her master’s degree at the University of Iowa with art historian Frank Seiberling, son of Goodyear founder F.A. Seiberling. She worked at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento as curator of art and held two museum directorships, at the University of Nebraska’s Sheldon Museum of Art and the Dayton Art Institute.
Her specialty is American art, and she has spearheaded collaborations among cultural institutions on a variety of topics.
Carol Biliczky can be reached at cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3729.
