Art Scoping

Episode 23: Elizabeth Easton

August 16, 2020 Maxwell L. Anderson
Art Scoping
Episode 23: Elizabeth Easton
Show Notes

Art museum directors are challenged as never before, confronting the pandemic, demands for social and racial justice, low morale among staff who have survived layoffs, and evaporated earned revenue. The woman of the hour to sort it all out is Dr. Elizabeth Easton, former chair of the Department of European Painting and Sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum, the first elected president of the Association of Art Museum Curators, and Co-Founder and current Director of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, who is preparing a new wave of hires to tackle these and other challenges. Our wide-ranging conversation includes the different challenges facing contemporary and encyclopedic museums, trends in scholarship, how boards think about hiring—and firing—directors, the search firms that elevate some candidates above others, and likely shifts in the articulation of art museum missions.