Saint Louis Art Museum director Min Jung Kim is at home with art
Min Jung Kim has spent her vocation performing with art, but has almost no artwork in her very own residence. “I really accumulate pretty little,” she states. “The ideal aspect of my job is becoming capable to wander by means of the galleries and get pleasure from wonderful works of art practically as if they were an extension of my individual dwelling.”
The Saint Louis Art Museum’s 34,000-piece collection is at Kim’s fingertips now that she’s taken the helm as the museum’s director. One of her priorities, she says, is to keep on producing all those masterpieces accessible to as several people as possible. Even in advance of accepting the role, she understood about a couple of of the collection’s strengths, these as its up to date German galleries—the Max Beckmann paintings, in particular—but she suggests it’s been a joy to explore new treasures in the course of her 1st months on the job.
“Our assortment in the regions of Oceanic and African and the ancient Americas assortment are truly breathtakingly beautiful,” she suggests. “I really feel like I’m just scratching the surface of quite a few extra strengths.”
Even although Kim doesn’t gather art, she is aware of a lot of men and women who do—and she’s amazed with the personal collections she’s witnessed so far in St. Louis residences: “In lots of methods, it has produced me believe that the composition of the permanent selection at the Saint Louis Art Museum has not only benefited tremendously but has definitely been outlined by so quite a few presents that have been created by non-public collectors more than the years.”
In Oct, the museum introduced a promised gift of 22 is effective of artwork from the personal assortment of Emily Rauh Pulitzer. That reward, which contains works by Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, amid others, is one of the most significant in the historical past of the museum, but it’s undoubtedly not the 1st. Around the many years, generous donations have experienced a true impact on the breadth and depth of the performs obtainable to museum people.
Although not all people owns these an illustrious artwork assortment, Kim shares means to assist artwork lovers fascinated in starting off a assortment or using just one to the up coming level. She endorses the Collectors Circle—part of SLAM’s membership program—which comprises 4 unique groups, just about every focused on a distinct specialty: African-American artwork, American artwork and structure, pictures, present-day art. The groups system particular activities this kind of as private lectures, viewings of non-public St. Louis collections, and in-depth tours of exhibitions.
“As considerably exposure [to art] as doable is normally a single of the matters that would advantage a collector at any stage,” says Kim, “and we have a genuinely lively collection of packages that engages that amount of membership in diving a tiny bit further.”