Katharine Lee Reid

Katharine Lee Reid (born 1941/1942)[1] is an American art historian and former art museum director. She has served as the director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the deputy director of the Art Institute of Chicago, among curatorial positions at the Ackland Art Museum, the Smart Museum of Art and the Toledo Museum of Art. Her expertise as an art historian includes European paintings and American and European decorative arts.

Reid is the daughter of Sherman Lee, an art historian who had expertise in Asian art and served as the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1958 to 1983.[1][2] During her childhood, her interest in art grew when her father would bring home photographs of artwork from art dealers and ask her what she would buy if she were director.[3] She studied at the Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, as well as at Vassar College and Harvard University. After receiving a Fulbright Scholarship in 1963, she studied at the Institut d'art et d'archéologie in the Sorbonne. She then studied museum curatorship at the Toledo Museum of Art in 1966.[1][4]

From 1982 to 1991, Reid served as the assistant director and the deputy director of the Art Institute of Chicago, and then as the director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) from 1991 to 2000.[1] During her tenure as director, the VMFA opened installations exhibiting Fabergé and ancient Egyptian art and expanded its outreach programs specifically directed towards the African-American community of Richmond, Virginia. Furthermore, she initiated a $110-million expansion and renovation of the museum and helped to found an organization named Museums on the Boulevard (MOB). The purpose of MOB was to coordinate programs among the cultural institutions of the Fan district of Richmond, Virginia.[3] Prior to her position at the VMFA, she also worked as a curator at the Ackland Art Museum, the Smart Museum of Art and the Toledo Museum of Art.[1]

On March 13, 2000, she succeeded Robert Bergman as the sixth director of the Cleveland Museum of Art. In her time as director, the museum broke ground for a renovation and expansion designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly, as well as the creation of a separate department of African art in 2001.[5][6] The museums notable acquisitions under her tenure included works by Salvador Dalí, Fitz Hugh Lane, Lee Krasner, Augusta Savage and Frank Stella.[7] She retired from her directorship in 2005 to spend time with family and in 2006 Timothy Rub became the museum's next director.[8]

Reid has received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Government of France, and has been awarded honorary degrees by Knox College and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She continues to serve on the advisory boards of the Ackland Art Museum and the Nasher Museum of Art.[9]