Displaying items by tag: william m. griswold

The Morgan Library & Museum, which has been without a leader since late last summer, looked West to bring back a longtime New Yorker as its new director, choosing Colin B. Bailey, who has served since 2013 as director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco but was for many years before that the chief curator at the Frick Collection.

Mr. Bailey, a well-regarded Renoir scholar, succeeds William M. Griswold, who left last year to take over the Cleveland Museum of Art. Mr. Bailey comes to the Morgan almost a decade after an expansion, designed by Renzo Piano, enlarged not only the museum’s floor plan but also its ambitions, moving it more actively into contemporary art, collaborations with other institutions and high-end acquisitions.

Seven months after David Franklin abruptly resigned as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, with museum officials later saying he had lied to them about his extramarital affair with an employee, the institution has named a high-profile successor from New York, signaling a new chapter in its 98-year history. He is William M. Griswold, who has led the Morgan Library & Museum for nearly seven years. Mr. Griswold, 53, who will start his new job in the fall, said he decided to leave New York because he relishes running a bigger institution, with one of the most encyclopedic collections in the country.

“All told, I’ve been at the Morgan for 13 years,” Mr. Griswold said, including his years as head of its drawings department, from 1995 to 2001, as well as his years as director, from 2008. “I’m ready for my last big challenge.” Mr. Griswold also ran the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for two years.

New York’s Morgan Library & Museum announced that it will begin digitizing its renowned collection of master drawings next month. The goal is to create a digital library of over 10,000 images, representing drawings spanning the 14^th to 21^st centuries. The images will be free of charge through the Morgan’s website. The project is slated to reach completion within one year.

The images will be available for download for use in classroom presentations, dissertations and educational websites devoted to the fine arts. Each image will be linked to a corresponding catalogue record detailing the scholarly information related to each drawing. 2,000 of the drawings will include images of versos, which will show inscriptions by the artist.

William M. Griswold, director of the Morgan Library & Museum, said, “This project will provide access to the full range of the collection and is critical to our institutional goal of promoting drawings scholarship and reaching out to an ever larger audience.”