My Favorite Museum Director

Anne d'Harnoncourt, Director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, died last night. The city will miss her.

She turned the PMA, an institution whose facilities hadn't seen any major updates or renovation since the landmark building's opening in the spring of 1928, into a global presence in the art world and a cultural powerhouse for the city. Since the wildly popular and widely acclaimed 1996 Cezanne exhibit, well over a million people have visited the special exhibits attracted and managed by the her and the impressive team of curators she assembled. Under her leadership, the Museum made great contributions to the Philadelphia's culture, to Philadelphia's national and international reputation, and to the local economy. The PMA's current renovation and expansion project would not have been possible without her tireless and perfectionist efforts to never accept less than the best she knew the Philadelphia Museum of Art could be.

Her legacy will live on in the impact she's had on the city, in the programs at the Museum which attract and enrich the lives of tourists and locals alike, in the great special exhibits the PMA now routinely attracts, and in the inspiration she and her team have been able to imbue in thousands of schoolchildren, who were forced to visit some boring museum and still left with something they may never be able to identify but which will stick with them the rest of their lives--myself included.

From the fantastic but diluted effects measured in economic impact studies, to the huge special exhibits, to the more intimate evening summer programs, to the kernel of inspiration in the mind of a second grader, this citizen's gifts truly keep on giving. On behalf of all Philadelphia, thank you, Ms. d'Harnoncourt, Anne, for all you've given us--and most especially for the gifts we'll never be able to trace back to you.