Charles Desmarais

Charles Desmarais is the President of the San Francisco Art Institute. He assumed responsibilities on August 1, 2011.^[1] From 2005-2011 Desmarais served as Deputy Director for Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where he oversaw ten curatorial departments, as well as the museum’s renowned education, exhibitions, conservation, and library activities.^[2] He was Director of the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, from 1995 until January 2004.[1] Prior to joining the CAC, Desmarais served as Director of the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California. In the 1980s, he directed the California Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside.

Desmarais is known for his early patronage of now-prominent architects. He hired Stanley Saitowitz to design the award-winning California Museum of Photography, which opened in 1989. In 1991 he organized the first major museum exhibition of the work of Morphosis, the famous partnership of Michael Rotondi and Pritzker Prize laureate Thom Mayne. Most recently he commissioned Zaha Hadid and led the effort to build a new Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, which, upon its opening in 2003, the New York Times called “the most important American building to be completed since the end of the cold war”;^[3] the following year, Hadid was selected as the first woman to receive the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

A native of the Bronx, Charles Desmarais earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the State University of New York, Buffalo, and was a 1983 participant in the Museum Management Institute (which later became the Museum Leadership Institute program of the Getty Foundation).^[4] He has written more than 100 articles and books and was awarded an Art Critics Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1979.^[5] In addition to his experience as a museum administrator, Desmarais has curated more than 50 exhibitions of the work of various artists, photographers, and architects. Among his books and exhibition catalogues are Nothing Compared to This: Ambient, Incidental and New Minimal Tendencies in Current Art (2004), Stephan Balkenhol (2000), Jim Dine Photographs (1999), Humongolous: Sculpture and Other Works by Tim Hawkinson (1996), Proof: Los Angeles Art and the Photograph, 1960-1980 (1992), Why I Got into TV and Other Stories: The Art of Ilene Segalove (1990), The Portrait Extended (1980), Michael Bishop (1979) and Roger Mertin: Records 1976-78 (1978).

He also has a distinguished record in arts management consulting, specifically in the area of strategic planning and board development, in association with AEA Consulting and others.

Since 1985 Charles Desmarais has been married to Kitty Morgan, Executive Editor at Better Homes and Gardens magazine.

References

1. ^ Bohem, Mike. "Charles Desmarais, former Laguna Art Museum director, will lead San Francisco Art Institute". Los Angeles Times, 5/19/2011. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/05/laguna-museum-san-francisco-charles-desmarais.html. Retrieved 3 November 2011. 
2. ^ http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/press/uploads/2004_12_desmarais.pdf
3. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/arts/art-architecture-zaha-hadid-s-urban-mothership.html?scp=12&sq=%22Zaha%20Hadid%22%20cincinnati&st=cse
4. ^ http://www.getty.edu/leadership/programs/mli/downloads/mlialumni.pdf
5. ^ http://www.nea.gov/about/AnnualReports/NEA-Annual-Report-1979.pdf

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