Philadelphia Museum Director, Middlebury Alumnus Timothy Rub ’74, to Speak About the Relevance of a Degree in Art History

3/31/2011 For immediate publication
for further information contact Emmie Donadio, Chief Curator at (802) 443-2240 or donadio@middlebury.edu

Middlebury, VT—Timothy Rub ‘74, George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will speak on Friday, April 8, at 4:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Mahaney Center for the Arts, Route 30 on the Middlebury campus. Rub will speak about the relevance of a degree in art history from a liberal arts college in the current economic climate. His lecture, entitled “Marking Time: Reflections on a Middlebury Education and the Road(s) Not Taken,” brings one of the College’s distinguished alumni back to campus. In addition, the event is planned to honor two of Rub’s Middlebury professors: Glenn M. Andres and John M. Hunisak have both taught the History of Art and Architecture at the college for forty years. Their presence on the campus parallels that of the Middlebury College Museum of Art, whose permanent art collection they have each, with their impeccably high standards of quality and their passionate, contagious interest in art, helped to distinguish.

Rub’s lecture is cosponsored by the Middlebury College Museum of Art and the Friends of the Art Museum.

Rub, a native of New York, possesses expertise in both management and art. Following graduation cum laude, with highest honors, from Middlebury, he completed a master’s degree  in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and another master’s, in Public and Private Management, at Yale University. He served as director of the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College from 1991 to 1999 and director of the Cincinnati Museum of Art thereafter. As Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Cleveland Museum of Art from 2006 to 2009, he guided the museum’s comprehensive capital project and fundraising campaign, oversaw the reinstallation of its extensive holdings of European and American art, and brought to completion the first phase of its seven-year renovation and expansion project designed by renowned architect Rafael Viñoly. He also initiated a strategic planning process, managed the development of a touring exhibitions program that sent exhibitions from the Museum’s collection to Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Munich, and a number of venues in Canada and the United States, and was responsible for a broad range of acquisitions. Among these a superb 10th-century Chola temple sculpture of the Hindu god Shiva, a late 13th- century illuminated Bible, and drawings by Thomas Gainsborough,  Emil Nolde, Yves Tanguy, Reginald Marsh, and Jacob Lawrence, as well as an early wall drawing by Sol LeWitt.

Rub’s field of specialization is architecture and modern art. But as the area of his  acquisitions demonstrates, his interest in art history is both broad and catholic. Among his major scholarly accomplishments have been the development of several major loan exhibitions and catalogues at the Hood Museum of Art, among them The Age of the Marvelous; Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens, and Jose Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1928-1934. At the Cincinnati Art Museum he oversaw the exhibition Petra: Lost City of Stone. On his appointment to the Philadelphia Museum, renowned for its uniquely distinguished collection of works by Duchamp among other modernists, Rub admitted that he was by preference drawn to works of modern art.

Rub is no stranger to the Middlebury College Museum of Art. He currently serves on the College’s Arts Council, an advocacy group for the arts at Middlebury College. In 1995 he directed a Museum Assessment that led to the Museum’s education program, which was launched in 1996. And he subsequently served as a juror of the Bicentennial Museum exhibition 13 Alumni Artists.

Rub’s lecture is free and open to the public. A reception in honor of the speaker and Professors Andres and Hunisak will follow in the lobby of the Mahaney Center for the Arts.