Julia Marciari-Alexander will step down as director of the Walters Art Museum after 11 years to become president of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the museum announced Wednesday.
Marciari-Alexander will remain with the Walters until September, and she will begin her role at Kress in fall 2024, the foundation said in a news release.
“I am thrilled to be able to bring my breadth of experience from a career spent in both the academy and museums to Kress, whose philanthropic mission is dedicated to deepening understanding of the creative past in order to expand our views of our present and future,” Marciari-Alexander said in a statement.
She continued, “At a time when contemporary art so often dominates the headlines and conversations about the art world, I continue to believe that understanding the art of the past should be an integral part of research, scholarship, and teaching, as well as part of museums’ focus on exhibitions, acquisitions, and scholarship. I look forward to building upon the Kress Foundation’s important legacy, in the U.S. and internationally, and exploring innovative ways to expand Kress’ impact in what is a rapidly evolving cultural landscape.”
The Kress Foundation awards grants for art conservation and research. The foundation was founded in 1929 by its namesake, Samuel H. Kress, who donated his European art collection to more than 40 museums across the United States and Puerto Rico.
The news of Marciari-Alexander’s departure from the Walters comes just over 11 years to the day of when she first started as executive director there on April 1, 2013. At the time, she replaced Gary Vikan, who stepped down after 18 years as the Walters’ executive director and a total of 27 years with the museum. She came to the museum from the San Diego Museum of Art, where she served as the Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs.
In a 2013 interview with Baltimore Fishbowl shortly before she began in her new role, Marciari-Alexander described the Walters as “one of the great museums in the country in a city that is on the move.”
Like many cultural institutions, the Walters had to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. The museum swayed from initial closure at the onset of the pandemic, to reopening with limited capacity, to closure once again as the virus surged, and later reopening fully as restrictions eased.
In addition to the coronavirus, 2020 (and the years that followed) once again sh a light on police brutality, racial discrimination, and other historic and systemic forms of prejudice, particularly affecting Black communities. The Walters sought to confront its own past as an institution whose father-and-son founders, William and Henry Walters, were supporters of the Confederacy and beneficiaries of racism.
The pandemic also ushered in pushes for fairer labor practices and ignited unionization efforts across the country. Among them were the workers at the Walters, who in May 2021 publicly launched their effort to unionize.
The unionizing employees called on the museum’s leaders to voluntarily recognize their unions, but Marciari-Alexander refused. Instead, she said employees should vote in order to allow all workers’ voices to be heard – including those who did not want to unionize.
“We should not and will not and cannot take steps to interfere with or influence the outcome of a vote,” she said at an informational hearing in October 2021. “The most inclusive approach for our employees is to leave this decision at this point in the process to the employees, where that decision belongs.”
The Walters has presented many innovative exhibitions during Marciari-Alexander’s tenure with the museum, including an exploration of Ethiopian art and culture across nearly two millennia; a career retrospective of Baltimore jewelry artist Betty Cooke; and an exhibition highlighting the ceramic art form known as majolica; among others.
In the announcement of Marciari-Alexander’s upcoming move to the Kress Foundation, the board’s search committee chair Steven Nelson lauded her dedication to Kress’s mission.
“Julia brings to the Kress Foundation a critical combination of scholarly acumen, tactical experience, and visionary leadership, which make her an ideal choice to lead the Kress Foundation into its next century,” Nelson said in a statement. “Search processes are always so useful for identifying not just different candidates for a position, but also for hearing how a candidate sees the future of your organization.
He continued, “With Julia, we know that we have found someone who believes in our longstanding mission and focus on European art, architecture, and archaeology from antiquity to the early 19th century, and who sees opportunity for us to evolve our approach in order to expand Kress’ impact and benefit for scholars, museums, and audiences.”
