Blanton Museum

Blanton Museum's director gears up for the next big move

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Friday, March 10, 2006

"Can you believe that we're finally here?" says Jessie Otto Hite, relaxing into an ultramodern yet pleasantly overstuffed armchair in her office on a recent morning.

Of course here is a relative term for the director of the University of Texas' Blanton Museum of Art. Though the first of two new buildings that will make up the Blanton's new home will open in seven weeks, Hite won't be moving in.

At least not yet.

That's because the Michener Gallery building will house galleries. Hite and the rest of the administrative staff will have offices in the smaller Smith building, opening in 2007.

But this type of wait is easy for Hite. After all, since joining the museum staff 27 years ago as a part-time curatorial assistant, the carrot of a new building has been dangled in front of her.

For now, she's delighted to take donors and VIPs on almost daily preview tours of the new museum and make community appearances to spread the word about the April 29 grand opening. Or raise the final $1 million of the $83.5 million capital campaign, arguably the single largest arts fundraising effort in UT's history.

Of course when she started in 1979, Hite didn't conceive of raising that much money, let alone leading the institution. The museum had just welcomed its second director, Eric McCready, since opening in 1963. Hite was finishing graduate school in art history and had spent a summer helping restore UT's 19th-century plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture known as the Battle Collection, originally used to teach life drawing. Finding herself in McCready's office one day to give him an update — the same office she now occupies — Hite was surprised when he offered her a job as a part-time curatorial assistant.

"I thought it sounded like a good option, at least for the moment," Hite says with an easy laugh, her voice laced with a light Texas accent.

And why not work at a museum?

Born in Houston to parents who each had art degrees, Hite describes her family as "very visually literate." Though after a brief stint as a commercial artist her father headed into the oil business, he painted throughout his life; her mother pursued ceramics. Hite's own creative bent percolated in exuberant childhood art projects.

Nowadays it seems she wears her artistic flair, although with her modest demeanor she's quick to deflect compliments on her edgy but elegant fashion sense.

After majoring in early childhood education at UT, she rapidly realized tutoring tots wasn't her deal. A summer spent reading Irving Stone's biographical novel about Michelangelo, "The Agony and the Ecstasy," while making ceramics led Hite to pursue a master's in art history, concentrating on Renaissance statuary. And that interest in sculpture led her to work on the Battle casts. And the Battle casts led her to the Blanton, then called the Archer M. Huntington Museum.

It was an important time. With rapidly expanding collections, the institution was busy repositioning itself as a full-fledged research museum, not just a casual campus gallery.

It wasn't long before Hite began to rise through the ranks, moving to assistant curator then to assistant director of public affairs within five years. Really, Hite grew with the museum — and the profession. Big-dollar fundraising, marketing, recruiting generous annual donors — those were realities most university museums were just waking up to as Hite was perfecting them.

Her peers admire her experience.

"Whenever I've bounced an idea off of her, her advice is very well-considered, very sage," says Hugh Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. "She doesn't shoot from the hip."

Not even in the toughest times.

After Hite assumed the directorship in 1993, UT began in earnest to build a major new art museum. A highly publicized architect search led to the Swiss firm of Herzog and de Meuron, known for their ultra-modern style. But right before final plans in 1999, the regents rejected the forward-looking building. Supporters of the design demonstrated on campus; School of Architecture dean Lawrence W. Speck quit in protest.

Hite decided to stick it out. "I knew that if I left, the new museum project might get put on the back burner — maybe even for good," she says. "I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't just walk away."

(Though he resigned his position as dean, Speck retained his full professorship at UT; he also has a private practice.)

Her commitment earned her kudos.

"It's amazing how uniformly optimistic Jessie has been during this entire adventure," Davies says. "She's remarkably unflappable and even-keeled. Not many would have stuck it out."

In kicks Hite's modesty: "I'm lucky in that emotionally, I have the ability to leave work at work," Hite says, a nonchalant shrug signaling that that's all she wants to say on the topic.

Growing up in a family of strong women gave her a solid starting base. "My mother and grandmother always told me I could do whatever I wanted to," she says. "I wouldn't necessarily call myself a feminist, and a few times along the way, it did occur to me that being a short woman with a small voice might be a handicap."

Indeed, though it's more progressive than some, the museum director profession is still male-dominated: Currently the Association of Art Museum Directors (of which Hite is a member) claims 53 women members out of a total of 169, or about 31 percent — a figure that has stayed the same for several years, an association spokesperson said.

If Hite hasn't spent extra time during her career on the art party circuit, it's because she always made as much time as possible for her family. Still, busy days meant she never got to a parent day when her only child, Catherine — now a freshman at Washington University in St. Louis — was in high school. Now that Hite and her husband, Gerron, a preservation architect with the Texas Historical Commission, are empty-nesters, they exercise their freedom to go to a few weeknight movies. And a few more art parties.

And after 27 years, she's still fond of the Battle casts. Laughingly calling herself the "de facto curator" of the statuary — one of the few intact assemblages of such classical casts — Hite planned their installation in the new building, right down to selecting the pale blue hue for the wall of the rotunda gallery.

"Who knew they would lead me here?" she says.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699