SAN FRANCISCO – Directing a modern art museum is like being the head of a large, dysfunctional family.
Given the conflicting interests of benefactors, curators, critics, patrons and artists, any executive decision is bound to make someone unhappy.
To add more fuel to the fire, the director has his or her own interests to keep in mind as well.
David A. Ross, director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art – and the visionary behind "010101: Art in Technological Times" – has his own ideas for what a museum should be, critics be damned.
"I love David Ross," said John Killacky, executive director of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. "He's like liquid mercury. His energy keeps moving forward, and there's no stasis."
Contrast that praise with the criticism that ran rampant in the New York art scene during his tenure at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1991-1998.
"David has no aesthetic interest," said Hilton Kramer, a former art critic for The New York Times who currently writes for the New Criterion and the New York Observer. "He looks at the visual arts as a branch of communications media, with the content being political and sexual and non-aesthetic. And from spending my whole life in journalism, I know how lethal that can be to standards."
Ross believes the contemporary museum's role today is no longer purely as a vehicle for showcasing art, but also as a space to discuss the contrast of values and ideas.
"Art museums around the world today are serving increasingly central roles in their city," Ross said. "At the beginning, I don't think people thought it was going to be that kind of a place. But it's comfortably grown into that role."
Ross began his museum directorial career in California at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and then at the University Art Museum in Berkeley. He served nine years as director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston before moving to New York to take the director's job at the Whitney.
During Ross' tenure at the Whitney, many critics believed he placed more of an importance on the interests of the trustees and corporate sponsors, and less on the art itself. In a 1998 New York Times article, critic Michael Kimmelman wrote, "The museum needs a new director who can tell the trustees what to do, not the other way around."
Furthermore, many thought his exhibitions, such as the highly publicized, "Biennial" and "American Century" were too large in scope.
Ross said that it is exactly that kind of controversy that keeps art interesting, and moving forward.
"I loved the '93 biennial because it still resonates," he said. "I would be very happy if '010101' generated that amount of heat and light in terms of thinking."
Ross said he is encouraging of curators who push the envelope.
"The critics may say, 'That was dumb. That was a failure,'" Ross said. "Maybe privately I will agree, but then also privately I'll have a big smile that says, 'That's good that we went that far and that something collapsed under its own weight. It was that close to the edge.'"
Ross did say it's all in moderation, but that just enough controversy adds a little flavor.
Another example of controversy is Ross' interest in video and Net art. Some critics in New York believe a major art museum is not the appropriate vehicle to showcase these works.
"I'm not in principle opposed to any particular medium," Kramer said. "But based on my own limited experience of how new media is being used, to me, frankly, it looks like an amateur performance."
Ross said that Net art has caused a greater controversy than other types of technology because of its swift rise to the public consciousness and because the Internet has caused such a major cultural change. Whereas video art rose to awareness as a "slow burn," hundreds of thousands of people can now view online art.
Despite debate over his career, Ross built the Whitney collection by acquiring new works, and developed the first photography collection in the museum's history. Since his arrival at SFMOMA, Ross has acquired works by such contemporary artists as Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg and Rene Magritte. Ross also served as co-curator of the video art installation, "Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey."
Not all critics have been hard on him. For the most part, San Francisco has embraced his forward thinking and ideas for museum direction.
"In New York, people were upset with him for being trendy," said David Bonetti, art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. "Trendy seems to be a negative term, but the new is never proven yet. That's why it's interesting!"
Ross said that he enjoyed working in the New York art scene but likened it to "Br'er Rabbit's tar baby."
"You get into New York and it's very hard to leave New York," he said. "It's so filled with extraordinary people and extraordinary institutions and extraordinary energy that once you're in it, it's hard to escape from its orbit."
Whereas in New York every person's success is measured as someone else's failure, Ross believes that San Francisco does not have nearly the amount of jealousy or "back-biting."
Some industry insiders believe he rode the crest of the San Francisco dot-com wave, and that he may have a hard road ahead of him. Because of the downward economy, not as many people will be visiting art museums.
"But he has charisma ... and there's a sense that he likes things to be exciting," said Glen Helfand, a San Francisco freelance art writer and curator. "I wouldn't say he's afraid of it."
