Former Minneapolis Institute of Art director Alan Shestack stayed in the Twin Cities for only 21 months, but during that time he shook things up.
Frustrated by the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts' slow-moving bureaucratic machine and lack of funds for museum programs, Shestack insisted on a new direction for the institution. He left it in April 1987 and went on to become director at the much larger Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The museum director and scholar of northern European prints and drawings of the Renaissance period, known for his shrewdness and sharp eye, died at his home in Washington, D.C., on April 14. He was 81.
Shestack had an extensive museum career. He was director at the Yale University Art Gallery for 15 years before joining the Minneapolis museum in 1985. From there, he became director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he worked until 1993, when he became deputy director and chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. He worked there for 15 years until his retirement.
Evan Maurer, who became director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art after Shestack's departure, remembers him as a man who refused to accept compromised situations.
In the mid-1970s, Shestack was supposed to be the new director of the Art Institute of Chicago. At the time, Maurer held a curatorial position there. But when Shestack learned that he would have to report to an administrative director rather than have the full independence originally offered with the position, he declined the job.
"Being a man of great integrity, Alan refused to accept this compromised situation and left the museum," Maurer said. "What a lesson for us all."
Shestack was born in New York City on June 23, 1938, the son of David Shestack and Sylvia P. (Saffran) Shestack, and grew up in Rochester, N.Y.
