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Michael Govan
Michael Govan (born 1963) is the CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Previously, he was president and director of the Dia Art Foundation, and deputy director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Govan was born in 1963 in North Adams, Massachusetts, and raised in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. His parents, Emilia and Jim Govan, are noted art collectors of creches. As a child, his parents were leaders of the Arlington Coalition on Transportation, a neighborhood group that protested the creation of Interstate 66, a connector between Northern Virginia and D.C.
For elementary school, Govan and his brother attended the parish school in Arlington. In middle school, he won an art contest. In ninth grade, he was admitted to Sidwell Friends School, and his art portfolio was recognized by an art teacher at the school. He graduated from Sidwell Friends in 1981.
He majored in art history and fine arts at Williams College, where he met Thomas Krens, who was then director of the Williams College Museum of Art. Govan became closely involved with the museum, serving as acting curator as an undergraduate and designing museum collateral, including catalogues, logos, and exhibition posters. He graduated with a B.A. from Williams in 1985, and for his senior thesis he created a "conceptual exhibition in which he reversed the dynamic of paintings and catalogue." For graduate school, Govan attended the University of California, San Diego. In 1988, he dropped out of graduate school to take a job working with Krens at the Guggenheim Museum.
In 1988, Govan's mentor at Williams, Thomas Krens, was appointed director of the Guggenheim Museum. Govan at age 25 served as Krens' deputy director for six and a half years, a period that culminated in the construction and opening of the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim branch in Bilbao, Spain. Govan supervised the reinstallation of the Guggenheim Bilbao museum's permanent collection galleries after its extensive renovation.
From 1994 to 2006, Govan was president and director of Dia Art Foundation in New York City. There, he spearheaded the conversion of a Nabisco box factory into the 300,000 square foot Dia:Beacon in New York's Hudson Valley, which houses Dia's collection of art from the 1960s to the present. Built in a former Nabisco box factory (Govan actually spotted this building while piloting on a small engine plane flight from New York City to visit MASS MoCA), the critically acclaimed museum has been credited with catalyzing a cultural and economic revival within the formerly factory-based city of Beacon. Dia's collection nearly doubled in size during Govan's tenure, but he also came under criticism for "needlessly and permanently" closing Dia's West 22nd Street building. During his time at Dia, Govan also worked closely with artists James Turrell and Michael Heizer, becoming an ardent supporter of Roden Crater and City, the artists' respective site-specific land art projects under construction in the American southwest. Govan successfully lobbied Washington to have the 704,000 acres in central Nevada surrounding City declared a national monument in 2015.
In February 2006, a search committee composed of eleven LACMA trustees, led by the late Nancy M. Daly, recruited Govan to run the Los Angeles County Museum of Art after ten people turned down the position. Govan has stated that he was drawn to the role not only because of LACMA's geographical distance from its European and east coast peers, but also because of the museum's relative youth, having been established in 1961. "I felt that because of this newness I had the opportunity to reconsider the museum," Govan has written, "[and] Los Angeles is a good place to do that." Govan goes on to say about deciding to come to LACMA, “ I had spent so much time by then thinking about the anti-museum, about artists, time, history, and traveling the world. The encyclopedic museum still felt problematic to me.Rem Koolhaas had suggested in 2001 that you needed to tear LACMA down because it didn’t work seismically. It was too expensive to renovate. I talked with my artist friends who were from L.A. I took a deep breath and thought, This is the only city. It’s the new city. It speaks 200 languages. It sits on the Pacific Rim between Asia and Latin America. It’s the media capital.”
Govan has been widely regarded for transforming LACMA into both a local and international landmark. Since Govan's arrival, LACMA has acquired by donation or purchase over 27,000 works for the permanent collection, and the museum's gallery space has almost doubled thanks to the addition of two new buildings designed by Renzo Piano, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) and the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Pavilion. LACMA's annual attendance has grown from 600,000 to nearly 1.6 million in 2016.
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Michael Govan
Michael Govan (born 1963) is the CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Previously, he was president and director of the Dia Art Foundation, and deputy director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Govan was born in 1963 in North Adams, Massachusetts, and raised in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. His parents, Emilia and Jim Govan, are noted art collectors of creches. As a child, his parents were leaders of the Arlington Coalition on Transportation, a neighborhood group that protested the creation of Interstate 66, a connector between Northern Virginia and D.C.
For elementary school, Govan and his brother attended the parish school in Arlington. In middle school, he won an art contest. In ninth grade, he was admitted to Sidwell Friends School, and his art portfolio was recognized by an art teacher at the school. He graduated from Sidwell Friends in 1981.
He majored in art history and fine arts at Williams College, where he met Thomas Krens, who was then director of the Williams College Museum of Art. Govan became closely involved with the museum, serving as acting curator as an undergraduate and designing museum collateral, including catalogues, logos, and exhibition posters. He graduated with a B.A. from Williams in 1985, and for his senior thesis he created a "conceptual exhibition in which he reversed the dynamic of paintings and catalogue." For graduate school, Govan attended the University of California, San Diego. In 1988, he dropped out of graduate school to take a job working with Krens at the Guggenheim Museum.
In 1988, Govan's mentor at Williams, Thomas Krens, was appointed director of the Guggenheim Museum. Govan at age 25 served as Krens' deputy director for six and a half years, a period that culminated in the construction and opening of the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim branch in Bilbao, Spain. Govan supervised the reinstallation of the Guggenheim Bilbao museum's permanent collection galleries after its extensive renovation.
From 1994 to 2006, Govan was president and director of Dia Art Foundation in New York City. There, he spearheaded the conversion of a Nabisco box factory into the 300,000 square foot Dia:Beacon in New York's Hudson Valley, which houses Dia's collection of art from the 1960s to the present. Built in a former Nabisco box factory (Govan actually spotted this building while piloting on a small engine plane flight from New York City to visit MASS MoCA), the critically acclaimed museum has been credited with catalyzing a cultural and economic revival within the formerly factory-based city of Beacon. Dia's collection nearly doubled in size during Govan's tenure, but he also came under criticism for "needlessly and permanently" closing Dia's West 22nd Street building. During his time at Dia, Govan also worked closely with artists James Turrell and Michael Heizer, becoming an ardent supporter of Roden Crater and City, the artists' respective site-specific land art projects under construction in the American southwest. Govan successfully lobbied Washington to have the 704,000 acres in central Nevada surrounding City declared a national monument in 2015.
In February 2006, a search committee composed of eleven LACMA trustees, led by the late Nancy M. Daly, recruited Govan to run the Los Angeles County Museum of Art after ten people turned down the position. Govan has stated that he was drawn to the role not only because of LACMA's geographical distance from its European and east coast peers, but also because of the museum's relative youth, having been established in 1961. "I felt that because of this newness I had the opportunity to reconsider the museum," Govan has written, "[and] Los Angeles is a good place to do that." Govan goes on to say about deciding to come to LACMA, “ I had spent so much time by then thinking about the anti-museum, about artists, time, history, and traveling the world. The encyclopedic museum still felt problematic to me.Rem Koolhaas had suggested in 2001 that you needed to tear LACMA down because it didn’t work seismically. It was too expensive to renovate. I talked with my artist friends who were from L.A. I took a deep breath and thought, This is the only city. It’s the new city. It speaks 200 languages. It sits on the Pacific Rim between Asia and Latin America. It’s the media capital.”
Govan has been widely regarded for transforming LACMA into both a local and international landmark. Since Govan's arrival, LACMA has acquired by donation or purchase over 27,000 works for the permanent collection, and the museum's gallery space has almost doubled thanks to the addition of two new buildings designed by Renzo Piano, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) and the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Pavilion. LACMA's annual attendance has grown from 600,000 to nearly 1.6 million in 2016.