McMichael Gallery seeking new executive director and CEO

Yorkregion.com
Oct. 6, 2015
By Adam Martin-Robbins

Kleinburg’s McMichael Canadian Art Collection is seeking a new top staffer for the second time in just more than five years

The gallery’s board of trustees announced, last week, they aren’t renewing Victoria Dickenson’s contract as executive director and CEO, a role she’s served in since March 2011, and that by mutual agreement she has stepped down.

“Her contract was coming up in a few months and we basically had to look at what we were going to do at the impending end of the contract,” Upkar Arora, board chairperson, said in an interview.

“Victoria had done a great job since she’s been there in really building the momentum, delivering some great exhibitions, increasing attendance and memberships, but we’re looking out five or seven years and looking at the requirements are from a strategic standpoint. And we just felt it was the right time to bring someone else for the five to 10 years,” he added.

Dickenson declined to comment.

Nathalie Mercure has assumed the roll of interim CEO while the gallery hunts for a new leader. Dickenson will work with her during the transition until a permanent replacement is found, according to a news release.

“Typically, a process of this kind takes somewhere between three and four months,” Arora said.

“That maybe be shorter or longer. If we identify some stellar candidates, sooner. It may be longer, if the person we identify has a notice requirement where they are, which could extend their start date.”

Dickenson took over the job after Thomas Smart abruptly resigned in July 2010, following what many in the art world felt deemed a highly successful tenure that had greatly improved the gallery’s reputation.

The McMichael gallery’s board has, in the past, had rocky relationships with some of its top administrators.

In the ’90s, Barbara Tyler endured constant attacks from the gallery’s founder, Robert McMichael.

In 1996, he took his complaints with Tyler’s growing collection of contemporary art all the way to the Supreme Court. Tyler resigned in ill health in 2000. She died in 2007.

Vincent Varga followed Tyler in 2001, just in time for Bill 112, which was passed by the Mike Harris-led Tory government. Under the new law, the museum’s collection would be limited to what McMichael himself deemed appropriate. Never mind that his 1966 gift to the province, of his Kleinburg area property and art collection, numbered only 179 works; in 2000, with a collection of more than 6,000 pieces, McMichael was still in charge.