‘Bittersweet’ move: Whitney leaves Lansing Art Gallery for MSU museums

There’s nothing quite like the enthusiasm of Barb Whitney as she grabs you by the hand, yanks you over to a painting or sculpture at the Lansing Art Gallery and expands your mind with a breathless appreciation.

From now on, any yanking she does will be in a civilian capacity.

Whitney, director of the Lansing Art Gallery and Education Center since 2014, has moved to Michigan State University to do fundraising and development for the MSU Broad Art Museum and the MSU Museum. Michelle Carlson, the Lansing Art Gallery’s education director, took over as director Friday (April 1) and will serve until the end of June. The gallery board has not yet decided on a timetable for choosing a new director.

In her eight-year tenure as director, Whitney, 46, shepherded the gallery through some of its toughest times, ratcheting up its artistic standards, bringing art to the streets and parks of Lansing and expanding its statewide educational programs.

Yet there are some things she won’t miss. 

In the darkest days of the pandemic, she worked into the middle of the night, writing grants and applying for pandemic aid that would keep the gallery’s doors open.

“The gallery is so close to my heart that at times I’ve compromised my health and well-being, to my own detriment,” she said. “I had a six-part job description.”

As director of a dedicated but tiny staff, Whitney had to juggle exhibitions and educational programs with hiring, marketing, communications and managing the facility. The crucial lifelines of grant writing and donor relations were also in her hands.

When times got tough, she thought of her predecessor, Cathy Babcock, who retired in 2014 after 15 years as director. Babcock held her ground against strong pressure, “even from internal stakeholders,” to dissolve the gallery in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, according to Whitney.

“We are still here, in part, because Catherine Babcock said, ‘Over my dead body,’” she said. “That happened during the pandemic as well.”

Unlike many small arts and culture nonprofits across the country, the Lansing Art Gallery survived the pandemic, but it’s still in flux. 

Whitney hopes to be among the last directors to skipper the gallery equivalent of the Flying Dutchman, doomed to wander from one port to the next as leases expire and rents go up. In early 2022, the gallery moved from its basement home at 119 N. Washington Square to a two-story showcase at the renovated Knapp’s Centre downtown, the most recent of five moves since the gallery began in 1965.

Whitney and her staff have been working with Mayor Andy Schor’s Arts and Culture Commission to keep the gallery in consideration for a permanent home in a future downtown performing arts center, but that project is still in the early stages. The gallery’s lease expires in a year, with an option to renew.

“The conversations regarding the performing arts center, and whether the gallery has a place in it, go back many, many years,” she said.

Whitney said it will be “bittersweet” not to be around when the question is finally resolved, but she has “complete trust” in Carlson. 

“There’s no one I’d rather share my password with,” Whitney said. “She will be the eye in the hurricane through all the next steps.”

One of Whitney’s most recent fans is her new boss, Paul Andrews, who came to MSU in July 2021 to take on a new position as senior director of development in cultural arts.

“Barb’s an incredible writer who has had perfect scores with Michigan Arts and Culture Council grants,” he said. “She’s also a tremendous fundraiser with individuals. She has deep, deep connections in the Greater Lansing community.”

At first blush, the Broad Museum and the MSU Museum look like polar opposites. The Broad is a sleek, 10-year-old swoosh of stainless steel designed by the late world class architect Zaha Hadid; the MSU Museum is a classic brick pile, a 165-year-old, ivy-covered cabinet of wonders haunted by Allosaurus and Stegosaurus skeletons.

But both museums are exploding out of their assigned roles, especially under recent leadership. In July 2021, Devon Akmon took the helm of the MSU Museum, along with MSU’s Science Gallery in Detroit.

“Barb will be the key to starting a fundraising program at the MSU Museum,” Andrews said. 

Whitney will dig in right away at the MSU Museum to support a fall 2022 exhibit on climate change, “1.5 degrees Celsius,” and a spring 2023 exhibit on forests in Michigan, in tandem with the Smithsonian Institution.

“Devon is awakening a sleeping dragon,” Andrews said. “Barb’s ability to help us fundraise for programs that bring in a more diverse audience will be critical.”

Likewise, the MSU Broad has recently ramped up its local outreach and local exhibit content under its new director, Mónica Ramirez-Montagut. 

“I’ve been a fangirl of the Broad Art Museum for many years,” Whitney said. 

The two museums appear to be converging in a single, broader mission and taking pages from each other’s books. The MSU Broad is using museum-like materials such as documents and archival objects to enrich recent exhibits on automobile culture and the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. For its part, the MSU Museum (“Where Science and Culture Meet”) is lighting up with glitzy science exhibits like last fall’s “Tracked and Traced,” about the surveillance state, and cultural hybrids like the current exhibit on Marvel’s Black Panther and Afro-Futurism.

“The MSU is so new, so contemporary, so innovative, international in its reach, and the MSU Museum is a mainstay in our community, but also with incredibly innovative vision from the new director,” Whitney said.

“I’m really excited to follow again, to learn, grow under the direction of someone I trust.”

Andrews said he’s “overjoyed” to have her on board. “We’ve also managed to keep a community asset in East Lansing, hopefully for the rest of her career,” he added.

Instead of burning midnight oil, Whitney looks forward to spending more time with her husband, Jon, and the small mob of siblings and other relatives who live near their home on the rural outskirts of Lansing.

“We recently made Monday nights ‘sister days,’” she said, slipping back into board meeting mode. “We’ve made it a priority to convene more often.”