The Arkansas Arts Center board of directors held a special meeting this evening. After nearly two hours in executive session the board voted to hire Todd Herman, currently the chief curator at the Columbia (S.C.) Museum of Arts, as executive director. The position had been filled on an interim basis by Joe Lampo. Bobby Tucker, chairman of the AAC board, said the search committee narrowed their search to three final candidates, down from 15. The final three included Lampo. He would not say who the other finalist was because of his or her current employment situation.
Herman said he was excited about the new opportunity and bragged on the AAC’s “very, very good” collection. “My history is in drawings and there are few institutions that concentrate on drawings, this being one of them. So this was a good opportunity for me to go back to my roots,” Herman said.
When asked about the fairly bumpy road traveled by the Arts Center over the past year, Herman said it will be important to have the right people in the right places.
“To move forward with any kind of agenda, key people have to be in key positions and we have to all understand what our goals are,” Herman said. “That’s probably first on the agenda: getting to know the staff and marrying staff, skill and position. I would say that because there is more press here than I expected to be here that there is interest among the community about what’s happening at the Arkansas Arts Center and that’s a positive. It would be much worse if nobody was here and nobody cared what happened. The fact that this is a news story tells me there is interest in the community and people know the Arts Center and want to know what’s happening there.”