Director Kennedy has big plans for enhancing Toledo Museum of Art

Director Brian Kennedy discusses the forthcoming changes to the Toledo Museum of Art. THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT Enlarge | Photo Reprints

The footprint of the Toledo Museum of Art won’t be different in 2015, but a lot of furniture will be moved and the museum’s spirit will be invigorated if the many ideas bouncing around its 100-year-old walls take root.

To reconfigure the place literally and philosophically, certain things have to align, including enthusiastic leadership, hard work by staff, and the appearance of additional cash.

Fifteen months after being hired, Toledo Museum of Art director Brian Kennedy says his mission is to polish the gem.

"I’m arriving in Toledo when there’s no need to add a new building. There is a need for programming and to activate the community," he said in a recent interview. "We are not short of space. We have lots. We just need to use the space we have better."

Shortly after taking the reins in September, 2010, Kennedy solicited ideas from museum employees and volunteers. Last year, seeds were planted. And if the plan follows course, there will be a whole lot of "more" in the next few years: more gallery space, the bustle of more preschoolers, more contemporary and global art. Curators will buy fewer Old Masters and more pieces by unnamed masters from Mexico, South America, Oceania, Saudi Arabia, Africa.

"We want to introduce the audience to other artists of the world," Kennedy said. "We don’t have a Navajo blanket. We don’t have Indonesian textiles. Those are major art forms of two groups not represented."

Visible in the Glass Pavilion, Classic Court, and contemporary galleries will be reinstallations, the results of what happens when curators rethink what to display and how to present it.

"Content packages" allowing teachers to pull TMA’s art into their classrooms will be developed.

Funding methods may be jostled; Kennedy notes that it’s a great time to borrow money despite the region’s peevish economy.

Brian Kennedy notes the new lighting that highlights the paintings in the Peristyle lobby. THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT Enlarge | Photo Reprints

And for the first time, the public will be able to peek into the vaults, which have about 10,000 each of paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects. Images of each item are being scanned and will increasingly be online over the next few years. Meanwhile, staff will review those 30,000 objects and recommend which should be kept and which can be sold, exchanged, loaned, or given away.

Those holdings, by and large, reflect what the world was like and what was considered a treasure in 1912. For most of the 20th century, the purchasing philosophy was to buy one work by each great European and American artist, he noted.

"We’ve changed a lot [since then] in terms of our community and our ability to communicate with the world," said Kennedy. "What sort of collection will we be planning for 100 years from now?"

The majestic 1,750-seat Peristyle that wowed him in 2010 when he came for an interview from Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art will not only host more concerts and talks, but become a "gallery" itself.

He’s seen how the 1933 theater never fails to knock the socks off of visitors, be they the group of house-arrested teens on a field trip last month or the dozen groups of Chinese visitors who he takes onto the stage.

"It’s one of our major works of art."

Visitors will be able to gaze at the Peristyle’s sky dome upheld by 28 Ionic columns in April when its door in the Classic Court will be unlocked during museum hours. A huge Roman statue and wall behind it will be moved so the Peristyle’s entrance can be seen from down the hall.

And the museum’s hardware will undergo significant updates. Opening in a few months will be a remodeled cafe, hung with blown-up photos that chronicle TMA’s history. Ground-floor bathrooms will be refreshed. The entire building will be relit with LEDs.

In early June, the Wolfe Gallery of Contemporary Art off of the Classic Court will open. With its mezzanine, it will add 6,000 square feet in the East Wing.

In mid-June, the main parking lot will close for a $1.6 million, three-month renovation, including a new entrance and two exits. Slicing through the middle of the lot (parallel to Grove Place), will be a solar canopy serving two purposes: a covered walkway for visitors and the collection of energy. Its array of solar panels will double the museum’s energy collection, expected to generate enough energy savings to pay for most of the lot renovation.

The museum has reduced its kilowatt usage by 70 percent over the last 20 years through a variety of technologies. Helping substantially are the 2,850 solar panels installed on the roof in 2008 and 2011, with a total capacity of 200 kilowatts. It’s one of the largest arrays in Ohio and on a sunny day, it supplies as much as 40 percent of the main building’s energy needs. It’s expected to reduce annual grid consumption by 20 to 24 percent.

Happily, fund-raising has seen a slight uptick at this privately funded institution.

"We’re up in all categories, but marginally. We’re also up in shop sales. Hopefully that’s a sign of economic recovery," he said.

The museum has a 2012 budget of $14 million and 153 full-time-equivalent employees.

His pet project? An emphasis on visual learning, including a center that will teach how to open one’s eyes in new ways to art and ultimately, to see everything better.

"What is a museum’s purpose in a community? Why is it relevant? A museum exists to help you to see better. A museum exists to cause us to learn to see better by engaging works of art, and in our case, great works of art. In every aspect of people’s lives they can engage how they see and how well they see," Kennedy said.

For most visitors, that will happen in the galleries upstairs that will increasingly include interactive objects and new labels. For those taking museum classes, that will occur on the West Wing’s ground floor that houses the Family Center, community galleries, nearly a dozen classrooms, and offices.

The wing’s 16-foot-wide corridors, for example, consume substantial square footage. And the classrooms, used mostly at night, have large windows; Kennedy suggests turning some of those windowed classrooms into offices for staff who work during the day and would appreciate natural light.

The rest of the large area, primarily its interior, would be transformed into new classrooms geared toward how the visual arts relate to all senses. It could display digital art, have computer work/play stations, show films, and provide a place for school kids to eat lunch. He noted that the new director of education, Katherine Danko-McGhee, is an expert in young children and art.

Half the population doesn’t go to museums, but he knows the fix.

"Our entire challenge is to try to get them before they’re 5.

"When I came here, everybody told me ‘I came here when I was a little kid.’ The love for this museum is founded on being exposed to it at an early age."

Contact Tahree Lane at: 419-724-6075 or tlane@theblade.com.