Malcolm Rogers (curator)

Malcolm Rogers CBE (born 1948) is a British-born art curator who has served as the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston since 1994. In this role he has brought both extensive popularity and controversy to the museum.

Rogers was educated at Oakham School, Magdalen College and Christ Church, Oxford, earning a B.A. with first class honors and a D.Phil. in English. Prior to his position at the MFA, Boston, he worked his way up from librarian to Deputy Director at the National Portrait Gallery in London. An expert on portraiture, he has published extensively on the subject.

Achievements

Rogers' decision to open the museum for longer hours and express friendliness toward the surrounding community have gained him acclaim. Rogers’ initiatives have reflected his philosophy of “opening doors.” This has included renovating and reopening both of the Museum’s historic entrances—-Huntington Avenue on the Avenue of the Arts and the MFA’s State Street Corporation Fenway Entrance overlooking the Back Bay Fens. In addition, Rogers eliminated admission fees for children 17 and younger and instituted a series of free community days. Under his tenure, museum attendance has risen from record low to record high numbers, now around 1 million a year, and the museum's previously shaky finances have been stabilized to a considerable degree.

He has also sought to significantly expand the museum's collections by hiring key curators to drive the acquisition and donation of art process; the MFA's purchase of a piece by Degas is the most expensive undertaken by the museum. Acquisitions of English silver have made the MFA, Boston the most significant holder of such artifacts in the Americas. Under Rogers's guidance, the MFA has also made significant acquisitions of contemporary pieces by Joseph Beuys, Bridget Riley, Robert Mangold and Jim Dine.

In 1999, Rogers helped launch the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Nagoya, Japan, in order to "internationalize" the museum's brand. Under Rogers' tenure, the museum's Building the New MFA campaign, which was conceived of primarily to showcase the MFA's extraordinary collection of American Art, raised $504 million by its completion in September 2008. In all, the MFA received more than 25,000 contributions for the campaign, including 6,700 from first-time donors, indicating the degree to which Rogers' leadership has generated widely-based support for the MFA.

The campaign supported a transformational building expansion and renovation, designed by architects Foster + Partners (London). The expansion features a new wing for the Art of the Americas collections and, adjacent to it, a glass-enclosed courtyard, which opened in November 2010.

Rogers was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts in Britain and the USA in 2004, and appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 2007. In 2009, he received the award of Commendatore al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Commander of the Order to the Merit of the Italian Republic), one of the highest honors presented by the President of the Italian Republic.

Controversies

Rogers has been occasionally lambasted for the museum's exhibition regimen, especially his decision to grant the "lowbrow" photographer Herb Ritts his first museum show, and that to lend 21[1] Monet paintings to the Bellagio hotel/casino complex in Las Vegas. Other exhibitions have proven equally controversial, including one showcasing the guitars of various rock stars and another concerned with the luxury car collection of Ralph Lauren. Many of these shows, nonetheless, have been popular with the public.[2]

External links

• Official biography from the Museum of Fine Arts
• Malcolm, X - profile in the Boston Globe
• Boston Museum's Restructuring Sows Fear Among U.S. Curators - from the New York Times
• Apollo Magazine, Personality of the Year 2009

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Name	Rogers, Malcolm
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Date of birth	1949
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