McCaughey Stepping Down As Yale Director

NEW HAVEN — Patrick McCaughey has announced he will leave the directorship of Yale Center for British Art on June 30, 2001, to seek new opportunities in the arts and to undertake a period of research and writing. He will, according to YCBA president Richard C. Levin, pursue his interests as a senior research fellow of the center during 2001-02.

Mr McCaughey has served for the past five years as director of Yale Center for British Art. During that time, extensive renovations have been carried out to the masterpiece building by Louis I. Kahn, which houses the center and its collections.

In  1998 the building was re-roofed and all the public galleries were completely renovated. The collection of Paul Mellon, the founder of the British Art Center and the greatest collector of British art in the second half of the 20th Century, was reinstalled in the galleries in a new and lively manner.

Important acquisitions have been made over the past five years ranging from a 15th Century Nottingham alabaster sculpture to major works by Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread. Also during Mr McCaughey’s tenure the center has seen record attendance, approaching 120,000 visitors per annum.

The center has mounted a series of major exhibitions over the past five years. There have also been monographic exhibitions of artists C.R.W. Nevinson, Lucien Freud, Henry Moore, Gillian Ayres, Patrick Caulfield and John Walker.

“It has been a marvelously enjoyable and exciting five years at the British Art Center,” Mr McCaughey said. “The opportunity to play an active role in the teaching and research life of a great university and to function as a public art museum with a strong local following and a national and international reputation is a singular experience, indeed.”

During Mr McCaughey’s tenure, he organized an impressive range of conferences, lectures and symposia that drew upon the center’s resources, as well as those of academic departments and the Beinecke and Walpole libraries. He strengthened Yale’s relationship with sister institutions, ranging from Tate Gallery in London to Huntington Library Art Collections in San Marino, California. He also doubled the size of the Visiting Fellows program that brings noted scholars of British art to campus from around the world.

Mr McCaughey arrived at Yale after a period at Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, where he had earned a well-deserved reputation for strengthening that museum and creatively engaging a larger public audience.