Michener on the Hunt for new Head

The directors of the Michener Museum are preparing to search for a new head for the fine art museum on Pine Street.

But they know that filling the shoes of longtime director Bruce Katsiff will be a challenge.

"He’ll be hard to replace," Herman Silverman said recently. "But it's got to be done, so we’re beginning to make plans to succeed him."

Katsiff recently announced that he plans to step down from his post as director of the James A. Michener Art Museum. He will stay on through the winter and spring, and will leave in the summer or fall of 2012, he said recently.

"The board has formed a search committee and they’re interviewing search firms," Katsiff said recently. "I’m sure they will find someone younger and smarter than me who will be able to take the museum places I wasn’t able to take it."

That's humble talk from the man who has shepherded the Michener from fewer than 12,000 visitors a year in 1989 to 120,000 visitors a year today, according to figures from the museum.

Silverman, who with his late wife Ann and four daughters was the impetus behind the museum's creation, said Katsiff has steered the Michener expertly through the 22 years he has been at the helm.

"He took it from its infancy, and with a lot of people helping, he did a marvelous job of making it into what it is today," said Silverman, a leading Bucks County philanthropist and supporter of the arts. "He’s a rare man who knows art but also has business sense. He led that place so it has no debt, it has investments, it has a wonderful endowment, and great board partnerships."

Katsiff said he is stepping down so that he can devote more time to his own art - fine art photography.

In some ways, being on the business side of the art world tied his hands as an artist. He never felt it was appropriate to use his position at the Michener to promote himself, he said.

Retiring from the business side will allow him to concentrate on the artistic side.

"I'll be focusing a bit more on promoting myself," Katsiff said. "I’m looking forward to spending time making my own pictures, and I’m a dilettante potter, so I’ll be making messes with clay."

The Michener is so much a part of the arts landscape of Bucks County today that it is hard to imagine the time when it didn't exist. But before 1988, it didn't.

As nearly all longtime denizens of Doylestown know, the museum's home on Pine Street was once the "Pine Street Hotel" - otherwise known as the Bucks County Prison.

Built in 1885, it was the second county prison in Doylestown. It housed prisoners right up until the 1980s, when the overcrowded and antiquated prison was replaced in June 1985 by the prison south of town on Route 611.

The county commissioners leased the land and buildings, including the warden's house, which forms the front of the museum today.

Named for Doylestown's Pulitzer-Prize winning native son, the James A. Michener Arts Center opened in September 1988. It was renovated and expanded twice, in 1993 and 1996, and renamed the Art Museum.

In March, the museum broke ground for the Edgar N. Putman Event Pavilion, slated to open in May 2012. The $5 million glass-enclosed space will add 2,700 square feet for performances and special events, according to museum officials.

"What we’ve been doing in the last 20 years is building a facility that can host these amazing exhibitions," Katsiff said. "That's been our goal from the beginning, when you could go all over the world and see work by Bucks County artists, but there was nowhere in Bucks County where you could see that work."

One of Katsiff's legacies will be the team he created, Silverman said.

"You've got to give him credit. He’s really put together a crew of marvelous people who work at the museum," Silverman said. "We have a hell of a good reputation."

Those sentiments were echoed in comments from Mary Case, a consultant who works nationally with nonprofit museum boards and senior staff on leadership issues. She also grew up in the old Bucks County Prison - her father, John D. Case Sr., was the prison warden.

"He worked with an eye toward artistic quality, always increasing the scope and reach of the projects while balancing the budget," Case said of Katsiff in a statement about his retirement. "Along the way he developed a vibrant staff and volunteer corps and befriended scores of board members and donors.

"Now he leaves the people of Bucks County with bricks and mortar that will stand for generations, a carefully developed collection and the means to care for it. The most important resource of all, human intelligence, is part of his legacy."