By Linda J. P. Mahdesian
After six years as director of the David Winton Bell Gallery, Diana Johnson has decided to resign her position as of June 30. This energetic, stately and eloquent woman giggled when asked why she's leaving. "I need to fly ... I want to travel," she says. "We don't have a sabbatical where one can come up for air. ... It's as simple as that."
Johnson took the helm of the Bell Gallery as acting director in January of 1990, when the gallery became independent from the art history and visual arts departments. The gallery had to become something on its own. "I hope it's become something respected and appropriate for the institution," she says.
The gallery's collections include more than 5,000 works of art from the 14th century to the present, and is a primary resource for the art history and visual arts department faculty and students. The collection was built through gifts and contains museum-quality pieces. "Our 19th-century French lithographs are as good as another museum's 19th-century French lithographs," says the director proudly. "Our Jasper Johns and Richard Serra prints are the same as another museum's." Items from the collection are regularly loaned to other museums and galleries for exhibitions.
The gallery has as its most natural constituencies the two art departments, the University and the local community. But that audience has diversified over the years to include RISD students and faculty, as well as artists and the general public from New England. Johnson has also reached out to the Haffenreffer Museum in Bristol, native American artists, and the Latin American and Hispanic studies departments at Brown for possible collaborative projects. "Our goal is to make the collections and the gallery as accessible as one can," she says."
Each year, the exhibitions at the Bell draw between 10,000 and 12,000 people. A similar gallery at the University of Vermont draws about 6,000 visitors annually, according to Johnson. The Bell Gallery's display of "Film Architecture: Set Designs from `Metropolis' to `Blade Runner' " drew more than 2,300 visitors in December and January and is now at the gallery of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills through June 9, before it travels to Germany. By far the Bell's most popular show - the works of realist sculptor Duane Hanson - drew 10,600 visitors during its four-week run in the fall of 1990.
The Bell's exhibition catalogs have won numerous Museum Association awards in recent years. "We've emphasized well-designed publications, invitations and brochures" as a major way to reach the audience and alumni base, says Johnson. Last year the gallery was named one of the state's most valuable arts resources by the Providence Journal-Bulletin. "We've tried to do things in a serious way," she says. "People may not like what they see, but it will be worth seeing."
All of this growth has occurred against a backdrop of fewer and fewer federal dollars available for the arts. The gallery's operating budget is roughly $260,000 - "minuscule" according to Richard Benefield, who manages the gallery's programs. And except for Columbia, Brown is the only Ivy League school that does not have at least one art museum.
Still the Bell has thrived, but not without pain. "It's getting harder and harder for smaller institutions to get large enough grants from the NEH ... and corporate support is almost extinct," Johnson says. Her solution is to go to state agencies such as the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities (RICH), individuals and selected corporations "getting smaller amounts here and there." In fact, the "Film Architecture" funding came from a patchwork of grants from the Goethe-Institut of Boston and Los Angeles, RICH, The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Johnson's advice to her successor is threefold: "Realize that while the gallery has a higher profile than the permanent collection, the latter is an extraordinary and important resource. Try to be as open as possible to everyone at the University - you'll learn so much. And make good arguments for the role of the arts at Brown."