Michael E. Shapiro, who has served for 14 years as director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and has overseen a fundamental transformation of the institution, greatly enlarging its collection and its international standing, announced on Wednesday that he planned to step down in the summer of 2015.
Mr. Shapiro, who previously served as the museum’s chief curator and deputy director, said that two milestones – he is turning 65 next month and will mark his 20th year at the museum next January – led him to the decision. “It’s been on my mind for five years or so that it seemed like a natural time to finish that chapter,” he said. “Because otherwise there is no natural end point, and I feel like we’ve accomplished a tremendous amount. And the idea of a fresh voice to take the museum to the next level makes a lot of sense to me.”
During his tenure, the museum nearly doubled the number of works in its permanent collection, acquiring important paintings by 19th and 20th century and contemporary artists like artists Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly and Julie Mehretu. The High raised nearly $230 million during that time, increasing its endowment by nearly 30 percent and building an acquisition fund of nearly $20 million. It greatly enlarged its educational programs and accessibility for school children. And it completed an expansion by Renzo Piano that more than doubled the museum’s size.
The museum became known for actively pursuing international loan partnerships, showing works from the Louvre, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Museum of the Terracotta Army and the Cultural Relics Bureau of Shaanxi Province in Xi’an, China, which made possible “The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army” in 2008, the most highly attended show in the High’s history.
“It’s not a perfect model,” Mr. Shapiro said of such art exchanges. “But we’re all hungry for content, as they call it now, and to be able to mine that kind of content from around the world is a great thing for a museum.”
Of his future plans, he added: “I’m kind of an open book now. And as people around here like to say, I feel blessed.”