Metro Pulse/Insights/Richard Ferrin

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by Joe Sullivan

At the Knoxville Museum of Art's grand opening in the spring of 1990, the community's glitterati assembled at a black-tie gala to celebrate their success in raising $11 million for the city's new marble-clad monument to culture.

When the KMA celebrates its 10th anniversary on April 15, the festivities will be quite different. A day-long community party is planned with the museum's exhibit halls open to the public at no charge. Kids' activities, jazz music for which KMA has become renowned, and a regional art show will spill over onto the museum's grounds as well.

The contrast with its elitist origins dramatizes how far the KMA has progressed in reaching out to the populace with diverse offerings and an aura of inclusiveness. Fittingly, the works of M.C. Escher now on display are well on their way toward breaking the 40,000 attendance record for a single exhibit set by Passions of Rodin in 1995. And just attracting such luminous exhibits also contrasts starkly with the dark days of the early 1990s when the KMA couldn't pay its bills and teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

More than any other single person, the man most responsible for KMA's transformation is its president for the past seven years, Richard Ferrin. That's about six years and six months longer than the former Maryville College president bargained on when he agreed to take the post on an interim basis while anticipating a return to academia. But when the now silver-haired Ferrin announced last week that he'd be stepping down at mid-year, he could rightly point with pride to a legacy that transcends the challenges he originally stepped up to.

"Getting Richard to come in when he did may very well have been the difference between keeping the museum open and having it close down," says Tom Ingram, now the president of the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership but then the KMA's volunteer chairman. "Without someone of his stature and credibility in charge, the powers that be weren't going to continue forking over more money at every executive committee meeting just to meet the payroll."

Beyond balancing the budget and keeping it balanced at a level that has since doubled to $2.5 million annually, Ferrin brought many other attributes to the post. "Along with being an excellent team builder and fund-raiser, Richard created a vision and was passionate in selling that vision of a non-traditional museum that reached out to the entire community," Ingram says.

Family Days have grown to the point that attendance at the most recent one exceeded 3,000. Alive After Five jazz concerts draw more than 300 to the museum nearly every Friday evening. The ranks of dues-paying members have doubled since 1993 to about 4,000. And overall private contributions have continued growing to upwards of $1 million last year at a time when static contributions to the city's other major arts organizations have left them facing deficits.

Above all else, though, it's KMA's programming that reflects Ferrin's commitment to diversity and inclusiveness. Along with traditional offerings such as Rodin, The Spirit of Ancient Peru, and the works of Ansel Adams, Alexander Calder, and Jackson Pollock, the KMA has reached out to minority audiences with the works of African-American artists such as Alcoa native Bessie Harvey.

For nearly a year prior to the 1997 Bessie Harvey exhibit that curator Steven Wicks assembled on loan from other museums including the Whitney in New York, KMA's educational staff worked to engage the faculty and students of Austin-East High School. Then, during the museum's acclaimed Holocaust exhibit in 1998, students from both Austin-East and West High School collaborated in accompanying interpretive dances and choral groups.

As the KMA has grown in stature, so has its ability to attract exhibits that would have been beyond its reach five years ago. The works of M.C. Escher on display until May 14 are on loan from the National Gallery in Washington, and Knoxville is the only city in Southeast to have gotten them. From June 30 to September 10, the works of world-renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly will be featured, drawn mainly from his studio in Seattle.

"These are among the most exciting few months in the museum's history," enthuses KMA's chair of the past two years, Barbara Bernstein.

Board leaders such as Bernstein and Ingram have contributed mightily to KMA's success, as have many others who've worked behind the scenes. And the board is now in position to recruit a new president with professional credentials that Ferrin lacked, at least initially. "We're in a very strong position now, and I'm confident we're going to do very well," says Bernstein.

But no one would deny Ferrin the accomplishments set forth in his March 6 letter to the trustees announcing his plans to step down. "We worked with an energized Board and dedicated staff to heal wounds, raised money, make friends for KMA, increase membership, boost attendances and visibility, organize trips, develop collaboration with other museums and educational institutions, create new programs, build a strong volunteer corps and generally established KMA as an art museum of which this region can be proud," Ferrin wrote.

As he joins his activist wife Wendy in a consultancy, Wakefield Associates, we are confident that the Ferrins will make many more contributions to the community in the years to come.