When James Steward joined the University of Michigan Museum of Art as its director 10 years ago, he endured Ann Arbor's version of trial by fire.
His first day of work was the week of the art fairs, and Ann Arbor Street Art Fair executive director Shary Brown recruited him to be an awards juror. On that Wednesday he spent about eight hours visiting every booth in the fair. Then he went back to his then-new house and collapsed on the air conditioned floor.
Steward has gotten a little more jaded after 10 years of art fairs, but he still loves the way the annual event transforms the community. There's something about that interplay between art and everyday folks that hits a sweet spot for him.
Steward, 48, grew up all over the world – his father did economic development work in India, Japan, and Thailand. In the States he spent time with his maternal grandparents in Virginia, roaming the rolling Blue Ridge foothills on horseback, an experience that's become kind of an anchor in his adult life.
About six years ago he and his partner, Jay Pekala, bought a 60 acre farm in the Blue Ridge foothills south of Charlottesville. Last year Steward bought a horse, which he boards near Ann Arbor and rides as often as he can.
The farm gives Steward a place to be near his aging mother without being under the same roof, as well as a connection to what he considers his native soil. And with the consuming task of overseeing UMMA's ongoing $41.9 million building and renovation project, both horse and farm provide him with a much-needed respite from the responsibility of refashioning the museum's identity.
"I get (to the farm) and I'm in a totally different mental space," he said. "I'm suddenly thinking about fences that need to be repaired and fields that need to be cut."
Steward's mother was trained as a professional artist, and she made sure art was a part of her children's lives. James visited his first art museum when he was six months old.
"I was very lucky," he said. "I never thought of museums and culture as alien things. It informs a lot of my view of what we're trying to do now, to make museums special places that have value, but that aren't alien."
He came to U-M from the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California, where he was assistant director. The directorship in Ann Arbor offered not just an opportunity to run the show, but also a chance to explore a lot of great untapped ways to connect the local community with the museum.
Steward met Pekala not long after he moved to Ann Arbor, but he had enough single-guy-in-a-new-town experiences to recognize that the city lacked quality places for single professionals to socialize outside the bar scene. That experience, combined with similar feedback from others in the same boat, led the museum to launch the Art Collective - a series of free, quarterly programs, held in the Loft Gallery at the museum's temporary home, 1301 S. University. The events usually coincide with the opening of an exhibit, and guests are invited to mingle and enjoy food and drinks while soaking up information about the exhibit from a curator. Anyone 21 and over is welcome, though it's clearly tailored to young professionals. And the word has gotten out. Every one of the casual, social networking events have been packed to fire code capacity.
"That said to us that there really was a hunger for that kind of experience," Steward said.
With UMMA's construction due to wrap up in the spring of 2009, Steward envisions a whole new role for the museum as a place that connects its many audiences – from students, faculty and staff to the county, state and nation. The new and improved building will have gallery spaces for visual art, but also space for music and dance performances and film screenings. It'll stay open late and include a full-service restaurant that features regionally-grown food – art for the palate.
"What we hope visitors will find when we reopen next spring is a set of gallery spaces that allow people to think of museums as more a part of daily life than a once-a-year destination," Steward said. "It's not just a place to go and be contemplative, but a place to go and be social.
"It's going to be sort of laboratory, and if you can't do it in this kind of university, you can't do it."
Amy Whitesall is a Chelsea-based freelance writer. Her work has appeared in The Ann Arbor News, The Detroit News and Seattle Times. She is a regular contributor to metromode and Concentrate. Her previous Concentrate article was Mastermind: Todd Sullivan.
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