Zimmerli's new director is a bridge builder

You might say that Suzanne Delehanty's last three decades of experience were perfect training for her new position as director of the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum. Taking the reins of one of the largest university art museums in April 2009, with more than 60,000 holdings, she feels as comfortable in the academic world as in the urban community of New Brunswick.

"My background includes two universities and two urban museums," Delehanty says. In recent years, Delehanty has been director first at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston from 1989 to 1993 and the Miami Art Museum, where she expanded the art center's reach into the community from 1995 to 2005.

Delehanty earned an international reputation during her tenure in Miami for collecting art from around the world and from the 20th and 21st centuries. She also secured a new waterfront site for the MAM.

 

The Massachussetts native began her career at The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also did graduate studies, and continued her commitment to art collections at the Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase from 1978 to 1988.

 

She wants to use the museum as a lab for Rutgers students, and classes often visit the exhibits. On April 8, one of the museum's curators will go on a bus tour with adults to Philidelphia to visit the art museums there.

"This is a well thought out, tailor made program for our community," Delehanty said. "One of Rutgers' favorite mottos is 'New Jersey Roots, Global Reach' (and) this is the special outreach I want to add, extending the borders to not only other museums, but to the art holdings out of our immediate area."

"During my  first year, 6,000 school children from preschool to high school visited the Zimmerli for interactive tours, a drawing club and summer camp programs," Delehanty said. "For adults we have tours with trained docents, who all come from the community. We also have a drawing society with classes and instructors."

If you are an adult and claim to be too busy to visit during normal museum hours, Delehanty will invite you to Art After Hours on the first Wednesday of every month from 6 to 9 PM, which includes tours, music, poetry, and dance. The evenings are for the working adult and active college student, so that the university and community can mingle together. During March's first Wednesday, more than 550 students and community members participated.

The April edition of Art After Hours will have music and dance from the Middle East to coincide with one of their visiting exhibits. Artist Lalla Essaydi's Les Femmes Du Maroc is a series of modern photographs adapted from Eugene Delacroix's 1830s Orientalist paintings, Les Femmes d'Algiers. Delacroix's series was created during a period of European colonization of the Arab world; Essaydi is an artist born in Morocco and educated in Europe and the United States. A tour and other activities are planned for the evening to complement this the provacitive international exhibit.

 

Delehanty also enjoys using the Zimmerli's well know permanent collection of Russian and Soviet art to create timely exhibits. Recently the Metropolitan Opera's production of The Nose, based on Nikolai Gogol's famous short story, was honored at the museum with an exhibit of four lithograph prints by St. Petersberg artist Viktor Vilner, also based on the short story.

 

"These works of art were also created in Russia and proved to be very timely and witty," Delehanty said. "It was time to bring them out and show them."

One of the exhibits now in the planning stages for September 2010 is simply called Water. For this major installation images of water are being assembled from the Zimmerli's collections of American, French, Russian and Soviet art, their Children's Book Illustration collection, and photos by Edward Steichen and other photographers. Works are being borrowed around the world and more locally from the Princeton and Newark art museums.

Delehanty plans to bring a political and cultural dimension to the conversation. Sculptor Maya Lin, best known for the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, is also doing a major installation for Water.

"We are using resources from every department and discipline at Rutgers for us to be connected to issues around this major resource and universal symbol," Delehanty said.

Water makes fluid all of Delehanty's many strengths, but none more than gathering the New Brunswick community together around resources both international and closer to home.

You can say that Delehanty's efforts are whetting, and quenching, a thirst across the river.