As MFA director steps down, a look at a decade of tumult

Boston Globe

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While previous generations of museum leaders were prized for their connoisseurship, sway with donors, and ability to build big, Teitelbaum has presided over the MFA as museums across the country have become arenas of cultural struggle — the battle over which stories we tell about ourselves, and, critically, who gets to tell them.
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As director, Teitelbaum has had to carve a sinuous path through today's fractured cultural landscape, balancing the desires of wealthy donors, the needs of the broader community, and the demands of activists — all while caring for a world-class collection of some 500,000 objects. He sought early to create
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But these successes were at times overtaken by upheaval and controversy. The MFA faced alarming allegations of racism in 2019. It suffered severe economic turmoil after it closed during the pandemic, an excruciating chapter that resulted in
Activists have called on the MFA in recent years to address problematic artworks, such as Cyrus Edwin Dallin's "Appeal to the Great Spirit," which sits outside the museum.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
On balance, though, the MFA looks good roughly 10 years after Teitelbaum succeeded longtime director
visitor numbers recently topped 1 million for the first time since the pandemic. Still, Teitelbaum's successor,
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'Running a museum is an extremely complicated endeavor, one where you're frequently balancing competing rights, as opposed to right and wrong,' said Jill Medvedow, former director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. 'Matthew Teitelbaum has really tried to lead from both his head and his heart. That is admirable and it is honest.'
Teitelbaum notched a major win in 2017, when he secured
Under Teitelbaum's leadership, the MFA's collection of 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings has become the nation's finest.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
'It's all joined together by the spirit of the different ways to understand these works of art,' said Teitelbaum, who has also sought to establish definitive collections of Boston artists
But Teitelbaum, who specializes in modern and contemporary art, also had some important misses. The museum, often criticized for its
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'I can't actually fully understand what happened there,' said Teitelbaum, who recently secured
'It is a necessary commitment [to newer art] that has to be evident to every visitor,' he added. 'If we don't achieve that, we will always be seen as somewhat incomplete.'
Teitelbaum, who specializes in art of recent vintage, secured a $25 million grant to enhance the museum's modern art program.
David L. Ryan
Teitelbaum's first big leadership challenge came in 2019, when a group of Black and Latino students on a field trip
Some museum supporters urged Teitelbaum to push back against the allegations. Activists clamored for reform, and the attorney general's office, then under Maura Healey,
It was a defining, lonely moment for Teitelbaum, who sought to validate the students' experiences, while also holding that MFA staff did nothing wrong.
'My position very early on was that both can be true,' said Teitelbaum. 'That's where I went quickly.'
But some longtime supporters, as well as staff, felt the mild-mannered director rolled over too easily.
'The museum took a black eye that some people felt was unjustified,' said one donor who asked not to be identified in order to speak freely. 'It was with good intentions, but he lost some support.'
It was an education for the Canadian-born Teitelbaum, an artist's son who'd previously run the Art Gallery of Ontario.
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'I had not experienced the hardness around positions that was expressed so quickly,' he said. 'Sometimes it felt like: How will we get through this?'
Teitelbaum's first big leadership challenge came when a group of Black and Latino students alleged racist treatment while on a field trip at the museum.
Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
The museum eventually entered a
Teitelbaum also launched a host of efforts geared at democratizing the museum, including a robust paid internship program, community forums about upcoming exhibitions, and two new positions dedicated to community engagement and belonging and inclusion.
Questions of racial sensitivity tested him anew in the fall of 2020, when the MFA, along with three other prominent museums, announced they would postpone a jointly organized career survey of Philip Guston that included his cartoon-like depictions of the Ku Klux Klan. Their reason: The museums needed time to reconsider the show given the racial tumult that followed George Floyd's murder.
The decision was met with howling derision in the art world, where the postponement was described as
When the exhibition
The MFA, along with three other major museums, was widely criticized for postponing a comprehensive survey of Philip Guston over concerns about the artist's so-called Klan paintings. (City Limits, 1969. Oil on canvas.)
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
Three years later, that criticism has largely faded, and Teitelbaum is often praised for his sustained effort to open the MFA to new audiences.
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'He's really grounded us in the city, and brought people in who had not really had a presence in the museum,' said honorary trustee Lisbeth Tarlow. 'It's not a bricks-and-mortar kind of flashy accomplishment, but it's every bit and more so in terms of an impact on the museum.'
But perhaps the most consequential events of Teitelbaum's tenure came during the pandemic, when the MFA closed for roughly eight months.
With earned revenue at a standstill, Teitelbaum presided over a painful round of layoffs, which in turn prompted staff, energized in part by the resurgent social justice movement,
to join a nationwide effort to unionize. The MFA, like many museums, is still recovering from the fallout.
'Who has led a public institution in your lifetime where revenues stopped in a 24-hour period?' asked Teitelbaum. 'The catastrophic shock of that is deeper for cultural institutions than many of us imagine, and we're still working through it.'
The MFA closed for roughly eight months during the pandemic, an interruption that is still felt at the museum.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Even so, Teitelbaum asserted, he's leaving the MFA with 'a lot of momentum.'
'I feel good about the direction,' he said. He added that he plans to split his time between Boston and Toronto, though he remains uncertain about his next act.
'I'm not running away from the issues,' said Teitelbaum. 'On the contrary, my challenge is, 'How do I stay in them without a structure around me?''
But those questions would have to wait. For now, he was content to amble through some of the museum's newly renovated galleries.
En route, Teitelbaum stopped off in a stairwell, where he made an unprompted offer to photograph a young visitor. As he regaled her at length with tales of the museum's founding, the outgoing director never once let on his role in shaping the institution.
'Evolution, not revolution,' was how he'd repeatedly described his stewardship earlier in the day.
Now, as Teitelbaum wandered the galleries in his waning days as director, he was facing a bit of both.
Malcolm Gay can be reached at