The Museum of Wonderful Arts, Boston named Pierre Terjanian its subsequent director and chief govt after a seven-month worldwide search, museum officers mentioned on Thursday.
Terjanian, the chief of curatorial affairs and conservation on the museum, will succeed Matthew Teitelbaum, who grew to become the director in 2015. Terjanian will start his new place in July.
In an interview on Thursday, Terjanian, 56, mentioned that he felt like every thing he had been doing in his profession was resulting in this second. “The predominant feeling is the joy,” he mentioned. “It is a nice establishment, and it has a giant half to play in Boston, in New England and past.”
Requested what he thought in regards to the total local weather round museums underneath the Trump administration — which has closed some establishments just like the National Environmental Museum and is attempting to pressure modifications at others just like the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art — Terjanian mentioned it was “unstable.”
“It’s an atmosphere that forces us to proceed to think about how we function,” he mentioned. “We clearly need to be in compliance with all of the laws, and we’re monitoring intently all of the modifications.”
He added that “uncertainty” will not be useful to establishments, and that the museum was at the moment “not planning any vital modifications.”
The museum would stay nimble, he mentioned, and he famous that during the last two years, it had acquired some funding from the town of Boston however has acquired lower than 1 % of its funds from the federal government.
The museum was not planning to keep away from sure programming due to the Trump administration’s prohibitions towards range, fairness and inclusion efforts, he added. “We need to be compliant, however presently we’re continuing with our applications, all of them,” he mentioned.
Terjanian, a local of Strasbourg, France, began on the museum in 2024 as a management staff member answerable for all conservation of the museum’s assortment of greater than 500,000 objects.
He helped develop the museum’s present exhibition “Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits,” a group of 23 works that discover the artist’s relationship with a neighboring household when he stayed within the South of France within the Eighties.
Earlier than becoming a member of the museum, Terjanian labored as a curator on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York and was additionally a curator and appearing head of the division of European sculpture and ornamental arts earlier than 1700 on the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork.
Emi M. Winterer, the president of the board of trustees on the Museum of Wonderful Arts, Boston, mentioned in a press release that Terjanian’s identify got here up repeatedly throughout the search course of.
“He shortly earned the belief and respect of his colleagues,” Winterer mentioned.
