After three years on the job, the director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is leaving Maine and going back to the West Coast.

Kevin Salatino will leave the college in Brunswick this summer to become director of art collections at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. He will begin his new job in July.

Salatino came to Bowdoin in the summer of 2009 from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he was head of the department of prints and drawings. Before that, he spent nine years as curator of graphic arts at the Getty Research Institute, also in California.

Salatino said he did not pursue the job with Huntington. “I was not anticipating moving, I was not planning to move. They approached me. It was the furthest thing from my mind,” he said Friday. “I went through the process, and lo and behold, they offered me the job. It was an offer I felt I simply could not ignore.”

Salatino leaves Bowdoin with high praise from his boss. College President Barry Mills cited Salatino’s leadership for the museum’s successful string of exhibitions, including an Edward Hopper exhibition last summer that drew nearly 50,000 visitors and drew national media attention.

Salatino now is working on an exhibition by the photographer William Wegman, which will be on view this summer.

“We expect similar great things from the Wegman exhibition, which Kevin has agreed to launch before assuming his new position at the Huntington in July,” Mills said in an email to the Bowdoin community announcing Salatino’s departure.

“Beyond these signature events, Kevin has helped realize the potential of the major renovation and expansion of our museum in 2007 by closely integrating studies of the collections across the curriculum and mounting exhibitions of international renown.”

Salatino praised Bowdoin for its support of the museum and of the arts in general, and predicted that the private liberal arts college will have a deep well of qualified candidates from which to choose a replacement.

“Because of the Hopper show, anyone who looks at us from the outside will say, ‘Wow, they were able to do a world-class exhibition that could compete with any exhibition at any museum anywhere. That sounds like a place I would like to be,’ ” he said. “We have some great momentum right now, and I do not think that momentum will be lost. There is always a little blip when one director leaves and another comes, but I do not think it will be a serious blip.”

Bowdoin will begin a national search for Salatino’s replacement in the coming months, Mills said.

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:

bkeyes@pressherald.com

Twitter: pphbkeyes

 

Copy the Story Link