Tacoma is losing its art museum director to Washington, D.C.
Stephanie Stebich, executive director of Tacoma Art Museum since 2005, has been appointed director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Smithsonian announced Tuesday. Stebich will take up her new post April 3.
“I am honored to have been chosen to lead the national museum of American art in our nation’s capital,” Stebich said in a news release. “I am eager to tell the inspiring stories of American art through the museum’s phenomenal collections and dynamic programs. I look forward to working with the museum’s talented staff and the other directors of Smithsonian museums.”
Stebich came to Tacoma Art Museum at a time of pivotal change for the museum as it segued from a small regional collection to an institution hosting and organizing major national exhibitions and greatly expanding its physical footprint. Arriving just after the museum moved to its current, Antoine Predock-designed building, Stebich has overseen major increases in both collection and size. That includes the $20 million Haub wing and gift of Western art; more than 2,000 new works in the collection, including the largest museum collection of glass by Dale Chihuly; and most recently a planned expansion to house the Benaroya family gift of major Northwest art.
Exhibition highlights of her term as director include traveling shows by Norman Rockwell and Georgia O’Keeffe, Matika Wilbur’s “Project 562” and “Art AIDS America” and “Hide/Seek,” both of which gained the museum national attention for art about homosexuality and AIDS. During Stebich’s tenure the museum doubled its endowment to over $35 million, and received grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts and Andy Warhol Foundation.