"I've seen time and again when the selection committees just wouldn't consider curators because they hadn't been in directorship positions, and they didn't think they had the wherewithal to assume such jobs," said Ms. Gund, who serves on several prominent museum boards.
I thought of the relentless legacy opportunities that museums are pressed to create, slapping the names of trustees and donors on galleries, wings, auditoriums, facades, directorships, curatorial positions.
Patten's listing in the register of members' interests in the House of Lords lists a directorship plus four other paid positions, and his position at Oxford which is listed as a "non-financial interest".
But he recovered sufficiently to take on two new positions, the directorship of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in 1990, and that of the Cologne Radio Symphony in 1991.
In 1855 he was appointed to the new directorship of the National Gallery, a position he held until his death.
At stake is the directorship of the festival, a position held for the past 49 years by Wolfgang Wagner, the composer's 80-year-old grandson.
"Maintaining practice in geriatrics is very difficult unless you have some other form of support," like an academic position or a medical directorship at a nursing home, said Dr. Peter Hollmann, chairman of the public policy committee of the American Geriatrics Society.
I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte's decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State.
From the beginning, Mr. Barrett, a pianist and conductor and an administrator whose entrepreneurial skills have been honed in several positions (among them the directorship of the Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y), has overseen the festival's direction.
Their goal was to give curators management skills and perspective that would help put them in the running for directorships and other leadership positions in the field, especially as museums have become ever larger and more complex businesses.
