Art: He made the Michener what it is

Bruce Katsiff remembers being asked, sometime around 1990, by the board president of the James A. Michener Art Center if he would be interested in running the organization, which had recently opened on the site of the former Bucks County prison in Doylestown.

To that point, Katsiff had been chair of the fine art department, and more recently the art and music division, at Bucks County Community College since 1975.

He was ready for a change but, as he remembers, "I had no interest in running an arts center. I wanted to run a museum."

That turned out to be as easily done as said. The center was rebaptized as a museum, Katsiff was appointed as the organization's second director, and the James A. Michener Art Museum took off on a sustained run of development that continues unabated.

Under Katsiff, the Michener has become one of the more prominent cultural institutions in the Philadelphia area. Until recently, he said, it was the second-most-visited museum in the region, behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

It's about to celebrate a double milestone - the opening of its fourth new wing, the Edgar N. Putman Event Pavilion, and of the museum's first international exhibition, a collection of paintings and tapestries from the prestigious Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Katsiff could legitimately bask in the glow of these accomplishments, but instead he's decided to surrender to the call of his inner vocation, fine-art photography, and step down from museum stewardship.

He expects to vacate his office in the former warden's house sometime during the summer, depending on how long it takes the Michener board to hire a successor.

"It's time for me to return to making pictures, and to restore my identity as an artist," he said. "I think I've done all I can do here. My goal now is to make photos, have exhibitions, and be a dilettante potter."

(Katsiff, who turned 66 in December, studied ceramics at Pratt Institute, where he earned an MFA. His BFA is from Rochester Institute of Technology.)

If you examine his record at the Michener, "all I can do here" turns out to be quite a lot. Although not the founding director, he essentially built up the museum from next to nothing.

Physically, it began with two 19th-century stone buildings partially enclosed by a section of the 30-foot-high prison wall on a three-acre site; the rest had been haphazardly demolished. When Katsiff took over, the only new construction was an L-shaped gallery building nestled against the wall.

Yet he could see the potential for much more. "Bucks County is known for its arts, but where could one see this artistic tradition?" he asked rhetorically.

"The site was great, it's the cultural acropolis of Bucks County," a reference to the Mercer Museum across the street. "We needed a facility and a collection that would meet national standards."

Under Katsiff, the museum has achieved both - as well as accreditation by the American Association of Museums in 2001.

The first addition, opened in 1993, more than doubled the museum's size and added an outdoor sculpture garden. The second, funded by a $1.5 million bequest from Mari Sabusawa Michener, the author's wife, opened in 1996.

In 2009, the museum pushed out its walls again, adding a special-exhibitions space large enough to accommodate such major traveling shows as that from the Uffizi.

The Putman wing, a sleek glass cube that projects into the sculpture garden, gives the museum a space dedicated to special events and fund-raising activities.

(Physical expansion also included establishment in rented quarters of a satellite gallery in New Hope in 2003. The Michener board closed it in 2008 because attendance failed to meet expectations.)

Katsiff's development of the museum's collection is perhaps even more impressive than its physical expansion, because it has established the Michener as a primary center for studying and exhibiting work by Bucks County artists, particularly impressionists associated with the New Hope colony.

This effort began in earnest in 1992 with a campaign to acquire donations of at least 40 museum-quality works. In all, 55 donors gave 187 works, representing 42 artists from the region. Another key gift in that year came from New Hope physician Kenneth Leiby, who donated 14 paintings by important impressionists.

Katsiff's biggest coup occurred in 1999, when he negotiated the gift of 59 impressionist paintings from Marguerite and H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest. This acquisition pushed the museum into the top rank for this movement, and made it a must-see for Pennsylvania landscapes.

Likewise, the exhibitions program has consistently explored and promoted the achievements of Bucks County painters, many of whom are featured in the current exhibition "The Painterly Voice" (through April 1).

Katsiff hasn't done it all alone; impressive response to various capital campaigns since 1992 indicates that the museum has built up a broad base of support in its community.

The bond between institution and community began, he said, with James A. Michener himself, who grew up in Doylestown, graduated from Swarthmore College, and became an internationally famous novelist.

"He was a good namesake" who not only contributed $100,00 to the founding endowment "but who generated a lot of support in the community," Katsiff said.

Perhaps just as important to the Michener's success is Katsiff's background, experience, and philosophy of running a cultural institution.

He grew up in working-class South Philadelphia, son of a butcher and a seamstress. Unlike most museum directors, he's not a credentialed art historian but a studio artist who has compiled an impressive exhibition record for his composed still-lifes, including inclusion in a group show at the Museum of Modern Art.

His populist vision for the Michener emerges when he says things like, "Museums are a place where the one percent and the 99 percent come together, voluntarily, and they share. The museum for me represents the democratization of art collections. People who have had good fortune can share with the people less fortunate."

The inevitable question in an exit interview is usually something like, Do you think you achieved what you had in mind when you came here? To which Katsiff responds, without hesitation, "I think I've surpassed what I dreamed. I think we have achieved more than any of us thought possible 20 years ago."

As someone who has followed the Michener's fortunes since opening day, I agree without reservation, and with considerable admiration.