LOS ANGELES – The Broad contemporary art museum has announced the appointment of four new members to its board of directors. Thomas P. Campbell, most recently the director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Sherry Lansing, CEO of The Sherry Lansing Foundation; Joanne Heyler, founding director of The Broad; and Deborah Kanter, general counsel for The Broad Foundations, are joining the board as directors to help advance the museum’s mission to make its collection accessible to the widest possible audience. The four new board members join founding members Eli Broad, Bruce Karatz, Robert Tuttle and Jay Wintrob.
“As The Broad celebrates its second anniversary, Edye and I are delighted to see the museum expand its board,” said Eli Broad, who co-founded The Broad with his wife Edythe. “The four new members reflect a wide variety of experience in industries including the arts, philanthropy, media and business, and we look forward to applying their insights as The Broad looks to the future.”
The Broad opened to the public two years ago today, on Sept. 20, 2015, and has welcomed nearly 1.5 million visitors. With free general admission, striking architecture and one of the world’s leading collections of postwar and contemporary art, The Broad continues to attract lines around the block, drawing an audience far younger than the average in art museums nationally. The inclusiveness and diversity of the Los Angeles area are reflected in The Broad’s visitors, more than 80 percent of whom said they had very little or a modest knowledge of contemporary art. The Broad features an active program of rotating temporary exhibitions and innovative audience engagement, and will soon present Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, opening on Oct. 21. In February 2018, the museum will present Jasper Johns: ‘Something Resembling Truth,’ the first major survey of the artist’s work to be shown in Los Angeles.
About the New Members of the Board
Having recently stepped down as director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas P. Campbell is taking a sabbatical year to research the changing nature of the art world as a Getty Rothschild Fellow at the Getty Research Institute (November 2017-February 2018) and Waddesdon Manor in the U.K. (March-June 2018).
As the ninth director of The Met between 2009 and 2017, Campbell pursued a groundbreaking agenda for the museum that focused on scholarship and accessibility. During Campbell’s tenure, the museum’s main building was transformed by the addition of new galleries for Islamic and American art, The Costume Institute, and European paintings, while the renovation of the Fifth Avenue plaza reinvigorated The Met’s exterior. Campbell strengthened the museum’s engagement with modern and contemporary art, including the 2013 landmark gift of Leonard Lauder’s collection of cubist art and the opening of The Met Breuer in March 2016. Campbell encouraged new thinking about the visitor experience and the museum’s award-winning digital presence, as well as a fresh approach to the live arts at The Met, allowing artists of all kinds to respond to and reflect on the collection. Between 2009 and 2017, the museum increased its attendance from 4.5 million to 7 million annually, becoming the second-most-visited art museum in the world, with an online audience of over 30 million visits each year.
Before becoming director, Campbell worked in The Met’s Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts for 13 years. During this time, he conceived and organized the major exhibitions Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002) and Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor (New York, 2007; Palacio Real, Madrid, 2008), both of which received widespread acclaim.
Sherry Lansing is CEO of The Sherry Lansing Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cancer research, health, public education and encore career opportunities. Among the foundation’s initiatives is the EnCorps STEM Teachers Program, founded by Lansing to transition corporate professionals and military veterans into roles as top-quality California public school math and science teachers. In addition, Lansing is a co-founder of Stand Up To Cancer, which funds collaborative, multi-institutional cancer research “Dream Teams.”
During almost 30 years in the motion picture business, Lansing was involved in the production, marketing and distribution of more than 200 films, including Academy Award winners “Forrest Gump” (1994), “Braveheart” (1995) and “Titanic” (1997). In 1980, she became the first woman to head a major film studio when she was appointed president of 20th Century Fox. Later, as an independent producer, Lansing was responsible for such successful films as “Fatal Attraction,” “The Accused,” “School Ties,” “Indecent Proposal” and “Black Rain.” Returning to the executive ranks in 1992, she was named chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures and began an unprecedented tenure that lasted more than 12 years (1992-2005), during which the studio enjoyed enormous creative and financial success.
Lansing serves on the University of California Board of Regents and is a trustee of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. She additionally serves on the boards of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, The Broad Center, The Carter Center, the Entertainment Industry Foundation, the W. M. Keck Foundation, the Lasker Foundation and the Pacific Council on International Policy. She is also honorary chair of STOP CANCER, a nonprofit philanthropic organization, which she founded in partnership with the late Dr. Armand Hammer.
Joanne Heyler is founding director of The Broad and director and chief curator of The Broad Art Foundation. She was responsible for guiding the construction of the museum and developing every aspect of the museum’s institutional strategy, operations and programming. To meet the museum’s core objective of reaching a wide audience, Heyler initiated a distinctly welcoming and engaging approach to the museum visitor experience that has received national media attention.
Heyler has worked for Eli and Edythe Broad since 1989, advising them as art collectors and helping to build The Broad Art Foundation collection. Under her direction, the collection has grown by over 65 percent, with the addition of more than 70 artists, including deep representations of work by crucial postwar figures like Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys, as well as work by more recent figures like Mark Bradford, Sharon Lockhart, Oscar Murillo, Kara Walker and Tauba Auerbach. The Broad collection continues to grow actively under her guidance. Heyler also oversees the foundation’s lending library, having expanded the reach of the innovative program to encompass more than 8,000 loans to some 500 museums worldwide since its founding in 1984.
Heyler is closely involved with the Broads’ major philanthropic investments in the visual arts, which have included the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Zaha Hadid-designed Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.
Deborah Kanter has served as the chief legal officer for the Eli and Edythe Broad-funded philanthropies and family office since 2002. Kanter created The Broad Foundation’s first legal department and has been a key advisor on major strategic and charitable initiatives. Most notably, she oversaw the financing, development, and construction of The Broad museum and Otium restaurant. She also directs legal and related business matters for Broad entities.
Prior to joining the Broad organizations, Kanter was vice president and general counsel for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), for which she established its first legal department. While at LACMA, Kanter helped to create the museum’s long-term strategic plan; restructure the board of trustees; reorganize staff; implement disciplined budgetary planning that stabilized and enhanced the museum’s financial strength; and establish museum-wide policies to improve operational efficiency.
Kanter began her legal career as a nonprofit tax lawyer at O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles. Prior to attending law school, she worked as a cataloguer in the Oriental Rugs and Carpets Department at Sotheby’s and as an assistant to artist Robert Longo.
She currently serves on the boards of The Broad Art Foundation, Hope Street Restaurants, LLC, and Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences.
About The Broad:
The Broad is a contemporary art museum founded by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, the museum offers free general admission. The Broad is home to the 2,000 works of art in the Broad collection, which is among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide, and presents an active program of rotating temporary exhibitions and innovative audience engagement. The 120,000-square-foot building features two floors of gallery space and is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library, which has actively loaned collection works to museums around the world since 1984. Since opening in September 2015, The Broad has welcomed more than 1.4 million visitors. For more information on The Broad and to sign up for updates, please visit thebroad.org.
