Celebrating Success: A gallery of her own

IF YOU'VE spent 25 years running museums the way the former president and chief executive of the Barnes Foundation has, what do you do for a second act?

For Kimberly Camp, 55, the answer is that she's doing what she's always done, albeit on a much smaller scale. Last week, she opened an art gallery on Haddon Avenue in Collingswood, N.J.

Camp, who grew up in Camden, named the 1,300-square-foot space Galerie Marie, after her late mother. It houses an eclectic mix of pieces from her private collection - amassed through years of travel to Africa, Asia and Europe - as well as works by artists she knows, and her own pieces.

"It was sort of like an 'aha!' moment," Camp told me last week when I stopped in for a look around. "I retired from museum work in December 2010. After 25 years, enough is enough.

"I've been painting for 45 years. I've made dolls now for the past 30 years. And I have stuff. I have stuff that I collected from my travels. I have stuff that I've made," she added, looking around her new storefront. "I have amazing friends who are stunning artists who have stuff. And it just seemed to make sense. The further I got along, the universe kept nudging me to keep going. It just seems like everything is falling into place."

Now, instead of presiding over contentious board meetings and dealing with the other pressures of a top-level position, Camp lives quietly in an apartment above her gallery, which also houses her doll-making studio.

When I visited, she and a former student and a local resident she'd hired were busy preparing for that Friday's opening party. Camp expected friends from her days at the Smithsonian Institution to stop by, as well as colleagues from the Barnes.

Her vision for Galerie Marie was coming together. Not that there haven't been hiccups as she's downscaled from running multimillion-dollar arts institutions to being basically a one-woman operation.

"I told someone earlier that I'm a CEO in recovery," Camp said. "It really is different. There's a power that comes with it. I was in my glory on moving day. Because I sat next to the truck and told people what to do all day long. It just felt like home."

Born in Camden in 1957, she grew up about a mile away on Broadway in an apartment above her dad's dental-surgery office. An only child, she attended Mullica Hills Friends, graduating in 1973 at just 16.

After graduation from the University of Pittsburgh, she got a master's in arts administration at Drexel University. Camp began her career as a visual-arts coordinator for Camden's murals program. In 1986, she nabbed a coveted National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

"In the mid-'80s, it was like everything I touched turned to gold," she recalled. She served as a program director for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts before moving on to found the now-closed Experimental Gallery, at the Smithsonian. Later, as president of Detroit's Charles Wright Museum of African-American History, she saw that museum quadruple its size and grow its attendance from about 50,000 to almost 400,000 a year.

Camp assumed the presidency of the Barnes in 1998 at a time when the institution was in deep financial trouble and controversy, as art lovers debated whether its multibillion-dollar collection of paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne and others should stay in Merion or be moved to Philadelphia, where it would be more accessible and attract much-needed revenue.

The late Albert C. Barnes had left detailed instructions about his collection and said that it should remain in the limestone gallery he had built for it in the 1920s. Camp worked closely with the foundation's legal team seeking court permission for a move to the Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia. It was a turbulent time, marked by court battles and animosity. The move was approved in 2004, and the Barnes Foundation opened its new location on the Parkway in May 2012.

Camp resigned in 2006, did some consulting work and, before she retired, helped open a museum in Washington state.

"I'm really honored that I could play such a pivotal role in making that a reality," Camp said of the Barnes move. "I was able to provide our legal team with information in Dr. Barnes' own words about why he would want the collection in Philadelphia. Unlike what a lot of people read, we were not bankrupt. And we didn't change the will."

I asked Camp to explain what ignites such passions with the collection.

"Albert Barnes was hit by a truck in 1951," she said. "After he was killed . . . everybody loved the Barnes so much that they wrapped their arms around it and choked it to death. They loved it so much that they kept grabbing and grabbing until they couldn't let go. A lot of things that happened after his death, people think were conditions that Barnes imposed, and they weren't."

An agent is shopping around Camp's tell-all book about behind-the-scenes maneuverings regarding the Barnes' move. Meanwhile, she's nestling into the community where she grew up and reconnecting with old friends.

On the day she went to settlement on the Collingswood property, a high-school classmate stopped in to say hello. Another childhood friend has been visiting daily. Camp's kindergarten boyfriend stopped by, as did the sibling of a former classmate. So, in addition to getting the gallery ready, Camp has been enjoying a homecoming.

"Over the years, I have learned that something amazing happens when artists and collectors discover each other," Camp said. "I hope to create a space where the unexpected can happen. Whether it's an unusual object of curiosity, workshop or lecture, I hope to inspire visitors to stop by and see what's new."

- The Associated Press

contributed to this report.

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