Graham Beal will be coming to speak at Museum Conversations on Wednesday, October 15, 2014. His talk is entitled “What’s the Big Idea? The Museum, the Collection and the Public.”

Graham Beal is Director, President, and CEO of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). He received a BA in History of Art and English Literature and Language from Manchester University and an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Prior to his current position, he held curatorial and leadership positions at numerous museums and cultural institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Joslyn Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, and the Walker Art Center. Since joining the DIA’s leadership, Beal has overseen two major capital campaigns and the renovation and expansion of the facility, as well as guiding the reinstallation of the museum’s stellar collection in new and exciting ways. Beal has continued to build on the museum’s outstanding reputation with regard to art acquisitions and exhibitions, and has greatly expanded the DIA’s community outreach through programming and innovative art installations. Beal has published many exhibition catalogues, books, and articles, including an exhibition catalogue on the DIA’s American paintings. He has served on numerous art panels, was a member of the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions from 1991 to 1995, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Association of Art Museum Directors and Chair of its Art Issues Committee from 2002 to 2005. He served on the Board of Trustees of the American Association of Museums from 2004 to 2007.

In his talk at the BGC, Beal will describe the processes that went into rethinking and implementing the presentation of the Detroit Institute of Arts great art collection, the effect this had on its largely regional audience, as well as the unintended consequences as related to the museum’s survival in the face of an anti-tax climate and an outright attack by the city of Detroit’s creditors in their attempts to salvage their losses in the city’s bankruptcy settlement.

Light refreshments will be served at 5:45 pm. The presentation will begin at 6:00 pm.

RSVP is required.

PLEASE NOTE that our Lecture Hall can only accommodate a limited number of people, so please come early if you would like to have a seat in the main room. Registrants who arrive late may be seated in an overflow viewing area.