Audio clip
Sam Turner
The Hunter Museum of American Art will begin looking for a new director next week, but it will not be in a rush, a museum official said.
The board will convene to begin the process of replacing Robert A. Kret, who announced Tuesday that he will leave the Hunter on Sept. 28 to take a similar position at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M.
The Hunter is "in a good place," according to Sam Turner, chairman of the board of trustees, and he hopes the change in leadership is an opportunity to move it forward even further.
"We can turn this into a positive, just like the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum did for themselves in stealing Rob away from us," Mr. Turner said.
The board also will discuss placing someone to run the museum on an interim basis if needed, Mr. Turner said.
"We have a very good staff and board, and we will do what is best for the Hunter," he said.
Mr. Kret, 48, became the museum's director in 2000 and, during his stay here, oversaw a $22 million expansion and renovation project, in addition to the creation of a number of outreach programs.
Mr. Kret said the museum doubled its visitation numbers from 30,000 in 2000 to 60,000 last year. The operating budget almost doubled from $1.4 million in 2000 to $2.6 million in 2008, he said.
He said his biggest challenge when he took the job was to "take the museum off of the hill and into the community."
"The most significant thing is that we've made dramatic strides in diversifying our audience," Mr. Kret said.
The museum regularly surveys visitors, and the number of people who identify themselves as black, for example, has risen from 2 percent four years ago to 10 percent last year, he said.
"We've accomplished a lot, and I feel I am leaving it better than I found it and that it is also a good opportunity for the next person," Mr. Kret said. "It is in a solid financial position with an excellent staff."
At 12 years old, the O'Keeffe Museum is relatively new, he said, "but it is a larger institution with a larger staff and more visitors, and it is in Santa Fe, which is considered to be the third-largest arts market in the country behind New York and Los Angeles.
"It is a larger kind of challenge, and an opportunity I felt I could not pass up."
Barry Courter is associate features editor, entertainment editor and books editor for the Times Free Press. He started his journalism career at the Chattanooga News-Free Press in 1987. He covers primarily entertainment and events for fyiWeekend and edits the Sunday books page. Born in Lafayette, Ind., Barry has lived in Chattanooga since 1968. He graduated from Notre Dame High School and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a degree in broadcast journalism. He previously ...
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