To achieve this he had regular breakfast meetings, networked on golf courses and on the glitzy social circuit. One that he recruited was Jeffrey Epstein.

As the Arts Newspaper reported “David A. Ross, the chair of the Master of Fine Arts in art practice department at New York’s School of Visual Arts (SVA), resigned from his role last week after newly released documents revealed his past ties with Epstein. A series of friendly correspondences between Ross and Epstein dating back decades show Ross praising Epstein’s idea for an exhibition featuring teenagers and young adults whose ages are ambiguous; in other emails, Ross expresses sympathy for the convicted sex offender long after Epstein’s first criminal conviction in 2008.”

From 2011

For nine years David A. Ross was the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (1982-1991). That was followed as director of the Whitney Museum of American Art (1991-1998).

During a feisty and insightful dialogue he describes being seduced to head the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at double the salary of the Whitney. It entailed the chance to build a great collection including works by Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, René Magritte, Piet Mondrian, as well as Marcel Duchamp’s iconic “Fountain” (1917/1964). It was a decision which he came to regret in 2001.Ross describes his tenure in San Francisco as a “four year honeymoon followed by an abrupt divorce. I was fired.”

There were a number of projects since then. He chaired the program of MFA Art Practice of the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He also is the lead singer for a band called Red comprising musicians he plays with in the vicinity of his home in Beacon, New York. It houses Dia Beacon the vast contemporary art museum which rivals Mass MoCA in North Adams.

Ross was particularly excited about the performance of his band that earned four encores during the recent ICA 75^th Anniversary Benefit.

He earned a BS from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications but states that he learned “Nothing in school. Everything I know comes from working with artists. They have influenced what I see, what I read, and how I think.” Yet, for someone who got so little out of formal education, he has taught all through his career. Teaching artists has been rewarding because “They don’t put up with my bullshit.”

Nor does he suffer fools easily. During our dialogue, for example, he was pointed in commenting that over nine years at the ICA he regularly visited the Rose Art Museum and had a keen interest in its programming. But its director, Carl Belz, whom he views as a brilliant art historian, “Never once set foot in the ICA during my time there. He considered what we were doing not worth looking at. Artists who knew him described him as sitting in his office watching soap operas when not playing tennis.”

As a columnist for Art New England, as Ross put it to me during an interview at that time, “If Carl Belz spit in a bucket you would write an article about it.”

Of former Museum of Fine Arts curator of 20^th Century Art, Kenworth Moffett, he recalled how he snubbed William H. Lane. It was only through Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. “A first class gentleman whom everyone loved” that Lane and his wife Sandra gave the museum what is now the core of its great early to mid 20^th Century collection of American Art and Photography. In 1988 Ross and his staff collaborated with Stebbins and Amy Lighthill to curate a joint exhibition. With MFA curator Trevor Fairbrother the ICA collaborated on The BiNational: Art of the Late ’80s in cooperation with the Stadtische Kunsthalle and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen of Dusseldorf.

Ross expressed contempt for the recent installation of the MFA’s Linde Family Wing of Contemporary Art. “Horrible. If that was done by a student of mine in a museology class it would be a C-.”

He has nothing positive to say about the Lord Norman Foster design for the Art of the Americas Wing; particularly the waste of space of its enormous vaulted atrium and popular soaring glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly.

Asked about the Guggenheim he blasted former director Tom Krens as a “disaster.” He ridiculed his agenda of “branding” the Guggenheim through its creation of satellite museums. Ross feels that the museum may “never recover” from that dilution of its mandate. In general, he is opposed to museums endlessly expanding citing MoMA as an example. It is arguably an advantage for land locked museums like the New Museum, the new ICA, and the former Whitney under his watch. It forces institutions to work within their limitations. Responding to a comment that the ICA has no room to expand, and is isolated in its new location, Ross expressed admiration for the Diller, Renfro and Scofidio design.

Like Kathy Halbreich, Ross went a long way as a museum professional with only an undergraduate degree. Arguably, he learned on the job starting as associate director, chief curator, University Art Museum, Berkeley (1977-1981); deputy director, curator of video art, Long Beach Museum of Art (1974-1977); curator of video art, Everson Museum of Art (1971-1974). All this led to his position at the ICA.  

A selection of his exhibitions includes: Co-curator, “Tomorrow,” Kumho Museum, Artsonje Center, Seoul and Long March Space, Beijing; “Peter Campus: A Survey,” Antico Collegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City; “Lorna Simpson: 31,” Claustro Sor Juana, Mexico City; “Quotidiana,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Castello di Rivoli, Italy; “KoreAmericaKorea,” Sonje Museum, Seoul; “Bill Viola: a 25 Year Survey,” Whitney Museum of American Art, traveling exhibition: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum fr Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Art Institute of Chicago.

When he was hired at the ICA Ross came with credentials as a curator of video art and new media. At the time he told me that “I didn’t come to the ICA to curate video.” At that point he stepped away from curating opting instead to support his staff. His one project at the ICA was a one man show and catalogue for Robin Winters who continues to be “a friend” and on Ross’s faculty at SVA. His only Whitney shows, largely by default, were for his close friend and former roommate, video artist, Bill Viola. Because of the illness of curator Walter Hopps he also stepped in on the Edward Kienholz retrospective. “Ed died (1994) during the project which also made it more complicated.”

We discussed museum deaccessions which in hindsight often resemble the Red Sox trading Babe Ruth to the Yankees. As he replied in 2009 to a blog by Richard Lacayo of Time Magazine “There is one more issue that no one seems to raise, regardless of which side of the issue is being argued. In my experience as an art museum director, the real deterrent should be simple humility — the assumption that acquisitions made in earnest by previous directors and/or curators should remain intact since the collection is the most important record of institutional direction and also functions as a significant historical index. Beyond this, all who have worked in art museums know that each curatorial generation reflects changing aesthetic priorities, and that none of us have access to an overarching truth. I would often ask myself, ‘how can I simply say that the judgements of previous directors were wrong and are now simply disposable?’ For it is this accretion of decisions that produce the aura that is a museum’s reputation and constitutes such a large measure of its social value. Museums preserve not only objects, but the thinking that supports the decision that certain objects are worthy of perpetual conservation, study, and public display.”

While the ICA is now firmly established under director Jill Medvedow (with whom he agrees to disagree) when he arrived in Boston the ICA was on life support. It occupied a relatively small building awkwardly designed by the architect Graham Gund. The lower level was leased as a restaurant. There were times when Ross recalls that David Thorne, the chair of the board of trustees, wrote a personal check to meet payroll. “We were lucky to have 30,000 annual visitors” he said. Ross left the ICA nine years later with a $2 million endowment.

He felt that Boston needed to see a diverse range of American and international contemporary art. From this evolved the eclectic, chaotic Currents program. It was modeled after the seminal Matrix program started by Jim Elliott at the Wadsworth Athenaeum. Initially works changed at a random pace. That settled into increments with openings and specific time frames. Instead of publications there were small leaflets with notes on the works exhibited.

The mandate of Currents was to allow time to decide what was significant. The attempt was to convey an ever expanding thumbnail of what was going on. This was particularly important during a time when the MFA under Moffett was narrowly focused and Belz was “watching soaps at the Rose.” It overlapped Kathy Halbreich at MIT and there were also fringe contemporary programs at the de Cordova Museum and Sculpture Park in posh Lincoln, the Danforth Museum in Framingham, and The Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton (now Fuller Craft Museum). While they cobbled together aspects of contemporary art the ICA under Ross was the mover and shaker.

Taking over the ICA from Stephen Prokopoff  he kept in place the curators Jillian Levine and Elizabeth Sussman. Later Sussman joined Ross at the Whitney. Previously she curated mostly historical, modernist projects for the ICA, and underwent an extreme makeover. Ross hired David Joselit now a critic for Art in America and a professor at Yale. Along the way he promoted Bob Riley from installer to video curator.

It was a great and exciting period for contemporary art in Boston. Ross was always accessible and never failed to provide a lively, often outrageous interview. During our recent exchange Ross had his game face on

David Ross I loved the idea that the ICA could get in trouble. Have its mouth washed out with soap. Could make friends and make enemies. Could be lovable and outrageous at the same time. It had a history of doing that. When David Thorne approached me at Berkley to take the ICA job it was basically with the idea that it could be reinvented. That was its primary quality that it remained open to being reinvented. I loved that idea about the ICA. That it was an institution open to reinvention. That’s what it was. I think it’s not that anymore. Not that I don’t like what it’s become but it’s not that anymore. Now it’s much more a formal institution.

When I first came it was very rangey. In the first couple of months we often couldn’t make payroll. David Thorne would write a check at the end of the week to help make the payroll. When I left there was an endowment of $2 million. Which was a lot. And a staff of close to 30. And the beginnings of a deal that would eventually bring it to the Fan Pier.

There was international recognition for the first shows to look at a number of interesting and important areas, including the Neo Geo and Appropriation movement. We had the first show to look seriously at Soviet Conceptual Art. The art which was being done in a period of transition and that show was done right before the end of the Soviet Union. At the time we didn’t know how close we were to that edge but that was a show I am very proud of. All the shows we did on the 50^th anniversary are a series of shows I feel strongly about.

The ICA’s history is a rather remarkable one. For the 75^th anniversary Jill (Medvedow) did this great slide show going all the way back with images of exhibitions and works of art that have been seen at the ICA from the 1930s to the present. It was just mind blowing.  

Charles Giuliano Perhaps I am in the minority but I find the building (by Diller, Renfro and Scofidio) problematic. It is a sculptural monument from the exterior but not very pragmatic in its interior space. The ground floor has too much wasted space in the lobby. The area with a view slanting down to the water with rows of computer terminals is not used. The galleries for a growing permanent collection and storage are not adequate. It is locked into its footprint with no room to expand. Doesn’t that sound a lot like the Whitney’s issues which you faced?

DR There’s plenty of room to expand but that’s going to take a different time. They’ve just pulled off one miracle.

CG How would they expand? There is no vacant property surrounding the building that the ICA currently owns. Would they add above the roof? That disrupts the original design concept which was the case for the Whitney’s Breuer building that proved to be problematic as well as expansions for Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic design for the Guggenheim.

DR They might acquire more land in the area. Who knows? They’ll find a way. They are a long way away from needing to expand.

CG It’s also a remote location and takes a pilgrimage to visit.

DR It’s not so remote. They are in the future of Boston. Where they are is still to come. If you walk down Congress Street or any of the streets in the waterfront area they are jammed with tourists. Back Bay is kindah empty. All the hotels and all the restaurants and all the convention business. There’s just tons of people. The proof is in the pudding. They are generating huge numbers of people. They’ve had a million visitors since they opened. We were happy if we had 30,000 in a year. They’ve had a million visitors man. There’s the “ICA effect” as was said by the Boston Globe. “Boston’s changing and it’s the ICA effect” that’s what Sebastian Smee called it. The new MFA wing is a function of the ICA Effect.

CG Have you visited the MFA and seen the installation of the (Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art).

DR Horrible. If that was done by a student of mine in a museology class it would earn a C-.

CG Can you elaborate?

DR Do I need to? Do you think it’s good?

CG I’m asking you.

DR The artists whom I have talked to whose work is in there are just mortified. It’s so badly installed.

CG In what sense? Can you be more specific?

DR Physically and intellectually. It is horribly installed. Just terrible. They did a terrible job. I was excepting so much. I was so excited. Seeing what they spent so much money on I just can’t believe it. It is a long, long distance from the kind of trajectory I would expect from somebody like Trevor Fairbrother and Kathy Halbreich (1988- 1991, from MIT, before 16 years at the Walker Art Center, and now MoMA) starting that process. It was just terrible.

Quite frankly I’m not that impressed with the American wing (Art of the Americas) either. The old American galleries and the pre new installation, I loved it. I liked the object selections. I liked the graciousness of it. I felt (the new wing) was chopped up. And talk about wasted space. What the fuck is that giant space for? With a little restaurant in the middle of it! My God that’s pathetic. That atrium with a God damned Dale Chihuly in it. Oh my God. That’s supposed to be great? That’s one of the worst museum expansion spaces I’ve ever seen. That atrium is horrible. It’s a waste of space. An energy drain. An embarrassment. Physically it’s an embarrassing space.

CG I guess you don’t like it.

DR I was so disappointed. I was so looking forward to it. Whether or not I like Malcolm’s (Rogers director of the MFA) approach, his success as a fund raiser and bringing the profile of the museum up, making the museum a more popular attraction. Maybe I was expecting too much. Perhaps I am still square in the Ted Stebbins camp. (He departed for the Fogg Art Museum rather than accept an offer from Rogers to become chair of the Art of the Americas.)

Terrible.

CG You enjoyed a close relationship with Ted Stebbins when he was curator of American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts. You and the ICA worked with Ted on the BiNational exchange with Germany.

DR No. That was Trevor (Fairbrother) and Kathy (Halbreich).

CG Earlier you worked with Ted and Amy Lighthill.

DR  Amy was good. What happened to Amy?

CG Amy is out of the game.

DR She was very bright.

CG Amy was pushed out. Then Alan Shestack hired Kathy (Halbreich).

(She had overseen the establishment of the List Visual Arts Center at MIT in its then new Media Lab building.  She was responsible for the move from the Hayden Gallery which she took over from Wayne Anderson. At the time it was viewed as a brilliant hire for the MFA. When she left for the Walker Art Center her assistant, Trevor Fairbrother, was given the vacated position.)

DR Kathy left her impact on the MFA by having that space (Foster Gallery) so beautifully done. I still love that space. It was done by Richard Gluckman.

CG That’s where the Ellsworth Kelly exhibition is now housed.

(It continues as a special exhibition area. Above it in the Linde Family Wing what was originally the Gund Gallery has been moved to the basement of the Art of the Americas Wing. The former special exhibition galleries are now installed with the museum’s contemporary collection.)

DR The Ellsworth Kelly was nice there.

CG Nice! That’s underwhelming praise.

DR It wasn’t a great Kelly show. If I’m going to see Kelly’s sculpture I want to see the large outdoor pieces and his works that have more scale. Kelly should be seen in the context of Richard Serra. That’s the vocabulary. There they made him seem much too domestic. For me, I love Kelly the painter. I know he’s a terrific sculptor too. But I love Kelly as a painter.

CG Can we talk about the MFA’s start on forming a contemporary collection?

DR There’s some terrific objects in it.

CG Such as?

DR I can’t recall. Don’t have my head screwed on for that. There are some terrific objects. It is clearly a collection with no depth and very little range. All collections have to start somewhere and it is good that they are showing interest in getting going. The point is how badly it was installed. I can’t over emphasize that. I haven’t read any reviews of it but I can’t imagine that it has been reviewed well.

CG People loved it.

DR You loved it too?

CG I had mixed feelings.

DR Did (Sebastian) Smee (then Globe critic now with Washington Post)

CG Yeah, for the most part. 

DR Well, that’s political. It’s got to be political. Nobody wants to say anything bad about something that someone has raised a ton of money for. It has a lot of hopes. By the way I have a lot of hopes for the future of the MFA. Boston needs a strong collecting MFA, a strong ICA, a strong Rose, a strong MIT and a strong de Cordova. It’s a big city. (also Danforth Museum, Fuller Craft Museum, and Fitchburg Art Museum)

CG On your watch at the ICA you passed on collecting.

DR  I don’t believe the ICA should collect. Jill (Medvedow) and I agree to differ on that. We all know it would have been great if the ICA was collecting when I was there. Polke and all the people we were showing. It would have been great. It would have changed the institution. I’m more interested in Boston having a perpetually adolescent institution than another grown up institution. The ICA has now become another grown up institution and it’s behaving in a much more grown up fashion. With Helen Molesworth there as a curator who knows? She is one of the great curators of her generation. Heads and shoulders  above anything that the MFA has in contemporary and 20^th century. In fact the woman who’s there was an assistant curator at the ICA before being hired at the MFA. (Jen Mergel is the Beal Senior Curator of Contemporary Art of the MFA.) The MFA needs a curator of stature while the ICA has one.

Helen is great. Helen is as good as Elisabeth Sussman or David Joselit. She’s on that level. Intellectually as well as someone who will be able to do the great shows. In fact her first show Dance and Drawing is an echo of Elisabeth’s old Art and Dance show but taking it a lot further in some very interesting ways. It’s a great indication of what Boston can expect with a curator of her caliber. I just hope she’s happy with staying in Boston. She seems to be.

(From 2010 to 2014 Molesworth was the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the ICA, where she assembled one person exhibitions of artists Steve Locke, Catherine Opie, Josiah McElheny, and Amy Sillman, and the group exhibitions Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957,  Dance/Draw^[, and This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s.)

CG Speaking of Polke it was interesting to see the Charlene Engelhard painting that you showed at the ICA in Currents now in the permanent collection of the MFA. 

DR She gave that to them because of Ted (Stebbins). Over the years I am sure she has regretted giving it away. It’s a great picture and we all love it. It’s great that it’s in a Boston collection. It’s one of the great Polke’s anywhere in America.

CG You worked with Charlene and the ICA had the Engelhard Awards.

DR Charlene is a dear friend. She is a wonderful person and terrifically generous; a woman of considerable wealth who happens to be an artist. She wanted to find ways of giving back to the community she lived in. She gave very generously to the ICA. When Ted was there she gave very generously to the MFA. She loved Ted. We all loved Ted. Ted is such a gentleman. Then she started the Engelhard Awards as a way of more directly giving support to artists in Boston and around the country.

(The scion of the family, South African miner, Charles Engelhard, is alleged to be the inspiration for the Ian Fleming character, Goldfinger. Peggy Ross worked for Charlene as an administrator.)

CG That no longer exists.

DR After I left things changed a little bit. Charlene pulled back for her own reasons. It had nothing to do with Milena (Kalinovska who followed Ross at the ICA). She has become much more of a private person.

CG During your nine years at the ICA to what extent were you working with and encouraging collectors?

DR All the time. Vijak (Mahdavi) and Dr. Bernado Nadal-Ginard  started collecting when they saw that little Spanish show at the ICA. It turned them on and they became unbelievably prescient collectors. It turned out to be a problem in some ways.

CG He’s the doctor who got into trouble.

DR Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When they sold that collection off for the foundation he had allegedly defrauded. Whatever. The objects he bought were incredible. Charlene collected. When museums do their job it excites people to collect.

(On February 15, 1995, the Harvard Crimson reported that, “Nadal-Ginard had served as cardiologist-in-chief at Children’s Hospital since 1982, as well as director of the Medical School’s M.D.-Ph.D. program and president of the Boston Children’s Heart Foundation (BCHF).

“In October 1993, Nadal-Ginard took a medical leave of absence from all his positions. Several weeks later, he came under investigation for alleged financial improprieties in his group cardiology practice at Children’s Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital.

“He was accused of diverting proceeds from his cardiology practice to build up his world class art collection.

“Last January, Nadal-Ginard was indicted for embezzling $130,000 from the BCHF. Six months later, he was indicted again for stealing $257,000 from two other group practices at the hospital.

“Then, in October, Judge Robert E. Keeton ruled that Nadal-Ginard had abused his position as president of the BCHF in establishing an unapproved benefits package giving himself millions of dollars in severance from a job he never left. That decision is under appeal.”

CG It is often said that Boston does not have major collectors. Do you confirm or deny that?

DR There weren’t a lot when I started and there were a lot more when I left. I’m sure there are a lot more today. I haven’t been keeping track. I’m sure they have a lot more collectors today than thirty years ago.

CG Can we shift to the Rose? Have you visited since the new Foster Wing was added?

DR I haven’t been there since the troubles.

CG Have you seen the new Foster Wing?

DR I have seen that. It was a long time ago before the troubles. (The proposal of former Brandeis President Yehuda Reinharz to sell the collection of the Rose Art Museum.)

(“Foster Wing was built on Joe Ketner’s watch, a gift of Hank Foster, it had clearly defined parameters on a limited budget, for which I believe Brandeis got good value. Upon opening, it garnered praise from Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell and an Honor Award from the Boston chapter of the AIA, and has extended exhibition possibilities in a quantum way. At the time, it was the first of a three phase program to improve the Rose’s physical plant; the newly renovated Rose building was the second step. A third, very ambitious design by Shigero Ban to address storage, educational spaces, etc. has yet to be realized. The Foster Wing was never intended to solve all and future problems.” Roger Kizik)

CG Can you comment on the addition that Graham Gund designed for the Rose?

DR I think it’s adequate. 

CG I think it sucks. (An enormous, high, open cube which is poorly connected to the main structure of the museum providing no additional space for storage and other museum functions.)

DR It’s not world changing. It’s adequate. It’s not great. Graham is a wonderful, generous and kind man, but not the world’s greatest architect.

CG He designed the old ICA.

DR Yeah. I remember one of those crazy jammed openings we had when nobody could move. People were jammed into the corners. I said “Graham!” He said “I never thought anybody would actually be interested in contemporary art.” (Laughs) That was basically his take. He never thought there would be big crowds there. Ever.

CG Boston is not thought of as being a strong center for contemporary art. But if you start connecting the dots between ICA, MIT, de Cordova.

DR That’s a stupid old prejudice. There’s an enormous community of young artists. Many of whom went to school in Boston and then stayed. The institutions you just mentioned are all first rate. With great thinkers; MIT, Harvard, BU, Tufts, Boston College. A lot of serious colleges generating a lot of serious thinking about art.  (Mass Art, the Museum School) As a result it may not be a huge audience but it is enormously sophisticated and thoughtful,  an engaged audience. It’s not a city the size of New York but it is a city which has enormous energy and brain power. As a result I always thought it was so delightful to be there. Even if we only had 30,000 people visiting each year they were very engaged people. They really had opinions and cared about what was going on. It was a terrifically fun space to work in. Because of the ways that people took art so seriously.

CG You talk about the Rose and the lack of synergy with the ICA. You told me that in your nine years you visited the Rose often but its director, Carl Belz, on your watch never set foot in the ICA. You described him as staying in his office watching TV or focused on playing tennis and asleep at the switch.

DR It wasn’t watching TV it was soap operas specifically. This was told to me by people who worked with him. I don’t know him that well.

CG I was an undergraduate at Brandeis when Sam Hunter acquired the Mnuchi/ Gervitz collection which launched its permanent collection. 

DR That was the high point for the Rose, Sam Hunter and the Mnuchin collection. Hunter was a world class character of his time. That was like having Jeffrey Deitch at LA MoCA. Sam Hunter was a player. He wasn’t just an art historian he was a player. He knew all the dealers. He knew all the artists. He was in the trenches. He was one of the guys.

CG After Hunter the Rose had Bill Seitz.

DR He was a serious player. There was the time when Russell Conner was there. He did the first museum exhibition of video art. You know that. Right.

CG He also did the New Television series at WGBH with artists like Otto Piene and Aldo Tambellini.

DR Right, right.

CG Later the Rose did the first Nam June Paik museum exhibition (as well as the first Bruce Conner exhibition). 

DR It all made sense. Then Carl had very well mannered taste. I think Carl had an admirable commitment to the artists of the region. Really admirable.

CG Part of that was serendipitous. He had no money.

DR Having no money is not like being born with a cleft palate. Having no money. Raise fucking money. No one gives you money. I didn’t have any money. I went out and raised money. I will never buy the excuse that someone had no money. The money is there to be found if you have ideas and energy. It wasn’t like he was in some small college with no money around. It was fucking Brandeis for God’s sake. The center of Jewish intellectual ambition in the United States. With hundreds of alumni who went on to fund other museums. All over the world. He just relied on the graciousness of Lois and Hank (Foster) and a few other people. I don’t want to hear that he had no money.

CG There are a couple of things you are glossing over. The Six Day War which changed Jewish philanthropy after which it focused on Israel. Also the Saxe and Powers incident which exposed the radical direction of Brandeis and turned off conservative donors. The fund raising expansionist momentum of Brandeis pulled back after that. 

DR He didn’t just have to rely on Jews for money. You didn’t go to Brandeis to study Talmud. Did you? 

CG Of course I did. (laughs)

DR (laughs) You went there because it was a first rate intellectual center.

CG I went to Brandeis for a lot of interesting reasons.

DR Right. And he could have raised money for all of those interesting reasons.

CG I don’t regret having gone to Brandeis. But they ripped my heart out in the way that they treated the Rose.

DR It was disgusting. Utterly disgusting.

CG At this point I have no emotional attachment to Brandeis. I feel completely betrayed. Particularly, as you say, how could the center of Jewish intellect and culture prove to be so philistine?

DR Exactly. As a Jew to me it was mortifying even though I had nothing to do with Brandeis. As a Jew, reading about the board of trustees deciding to sell these pictures because they had trouble raising funds. Fuck them. Go out and do the hard work and raise the funds. Raising money is hard work. I’ve raised a lot of money in my day and it’s hard work. It’s work that’s not impossible to do. You just have to go out and kiss a lot of asses. Go to a lot of bad dinners. Play a lot of client golf. It’s just like being in any other sales business. You go out and make the pitch. And you sell it and you win. You close the deal. That’s it. 

CGTo what extent was fundraising an aspect of your job as director of the Whitney Museum?

(See NY Times, March 29, 1998, Michael Kimmelman.)

DR For a museum director it defines your job. Period. You are responsible. Period. Whether you’re  director of the Whitney, SF MoMA, ICA. Raising the money to meet your ambition level is your job. You can lower your ambition level and hang out. Or you can have ambitions which you communicate to your board and community. Then you go out and lead the fund raising effort. You don’t have to do all of it. That’s why you have trustees. They can open doors and at times help make deals. You work with them and others. If you’re in a university you work with alumni. At the Whitney you work with trustees. You work with artists. You work with dealers. You work with anybody. You work with governments. You think entrepreneurially. You’re running a business. You’re the director. You’re the CEO. It’s your job. You don’t go around (whining) saying “Nobody gave me any money. Oh, I can’t do anything. I’m a poor museum director.” Then you’re not a museum director. You’re a curator. Then you’re just a wuss. I don’t know what it is. I can’t stand hearing people complain that they don’t have money. When I was at the Long Beach Museum as first year deputy director the budget I was given was $2,000. So I went out and raised $100,000 from various sources and did shows. I didn’t want to just sit around. What was I going to do with $2,000?

CG Your legacy is that you were director of two institutions (ICA and Whitney) in which you failed to close the ultimate deal which was to expand the institutions.

DR I didn’t fail. I did exactly what I wanted to do at the Whitney. I built out the fifth floor and moved the offices to an adjoining building, and built a new library. That was it. I was not a fan of the Whitney expanding any further. We did just what I wanted. We built our endowment. We doubled the endowment at the Whitney. We paid for the fifth floor build out. We paid for the new annex. We paid for the new library. With no debt and that was that.

CG Why did you leave the Whitney?

DR  I was romanced by SF MoMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) to come and build their collection. They doubled my salary and offered this enormous amount of money to build their collection. It was an extraordinary opportunity. Once in a lifetime. I think it was a mistake to leave, by the way, at the end of the day looking back on my career. I loved what I got to do. I enjoyed it. But I still loved the Whitney Museum.

CG How long were you with the Whitney and how many years in San Francisco.

DR I was with the Whitney nine years (actually seven) and just a little under four at San Francisco. I was fired at San Francisco. It was a tough ending.

CG Would you care to elaborate on that?

DR No more than is already on the record.  We had a four year honeymoon and then an over night divorce.

(Carol Vogel reporting in the New York Times, March 14, 2002 wrote that “After a seven-month search, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has named Neal Benezra as its director. Mr. Benezra, who has been the deputy director and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, succeeds David A. Ross, who left the museum abruptly after a whirlwind three years in which he spent $140 million building the museum’s collection of contemporary art.

”David was the right person at the time,” said Elaine McKeon, chairwoman of the museum’s board. ”When he joined the museum we were stuck in neutral. He stepped on the gas and away we went. Now we’ve got to sit back, take a deep breath and get our finances in order.”)

CG You have reinvented yourself a few times since then.

DR Not really I just keep doing what I do.

CG You had something going on at Beacon (New York).

DR When I moved to Beacon because of a couple of friends of mine. One was Michael Govan who was founding Dia (Art Foundation). We found a nice house up here and bought it. There are a lot of artists who live in Beacon so we set up a foundation to help artists work in Beacon. That was an easy thing to do. It wasn’t with my money. It was somebody else’s money. I don’t have that kind of money. Beacon is a thriving arts community with a lot of musicians and artists with a lot of interesting things going on.

CG David one would think you are at least a multi millionaire by now.

DR Hardly. Museum directors do not wind up with great fortunes.

CG Why is that?

DR I have no regrets. I had great times and learned a great deal. I got to work with the most remarkable artists of our time.

CG You were also a private dealer and had a gallery?

DR I did spend one year with an English gallery. It was an interesting learning experience. I don’t think I would ever do that again. It did convince me that it’s a good thing for anyone in museums to do at some point hopefully earlier in their lives than later. It’s interesting to see the art world from that side of the table. Very revealing. Very eye opening. But something I just wasn’t comfortable with. It didn’t take. It wasn’t right for me.

CG Weren’t you representing artists in New York?

DR Yeah. I had a little space on Spring Street. It was an informal gallery space. A lovely space. It was in a residential building in a beautiful old loft. It was fun. We did a few shows. We had a nice Peter Campus show. We did a show with an Iranian artist I like a lot. We did a show with an Egyptian artist. That was about it. But I didn’t really enjoy it.

CG Now you’re at the School of Visual Arts.

DR I’ve been teaching all along always. When I was at the ICA I taught at the Fogg. I taught a senior tutorial in contemporary art every other semester. I taught in California in 1975 at U.C. San Diego, at U.C. Irvine, I was on the board of trustees of the Art Institute of San Francisco. I always enjoyed teaching artists. Art history but I enjoyed teaching artists. Because artists will call you on your bullshit. Now I’m the chairman of the MFA in Art Practice (SVA) and I teach both undergraduate and graduate courses at SVA as well. I organized a new program the MFA in Art Practice. Go on line and you can read about it rather than me trying to explain it in three sentences. Go to the SVA Website and you can see everything about it. (Since the Epstein scandal Ross has been deleted from the website.)

CG So you live in Beacon.

DR Yeah. I take the train in or drive in. It’s only an hour away.

CG So you don’t have a pied at terre in NY?

DR I did for awhile but it seemed like a ridiculous luxury. Except when I’m working or have to see something I’d much rather be up here in the Hudson Valley. It’s beautiful here. My musician friends are all here. I play with one musician in the city in his loft. Ninety percent of my musician friends are here and I have a nice studio in an old carriage house behind my house in Beacon. And another rehearsal studio down in Garrison where my bass player lives. So me being here is much more fun.

CG You as a singer? What’s that all about?

DR I’ve always made music.

CG I didn’t know that.

DR I’m sure there are things about you that I don’t know. I’ve always played music and played guitar. I’ve never had time. My sophomore year in college was the last time I was in a band. When I became an editor at the school newspaper, from then on in, I’ve been working full time. In my senior year I became curator of video art at the Everson (Museum of Syracuse University). So I never stopped working in museums from when I was 20 to 2001. Close to 40 years.

CG You left San Francisco in 2001. You’ve been a pretty eclectic guy. Who is David Ross and what is David Ross?

DR Fuck if I know. Just another guy trying to get by. Somebody who gets up every day and tries to do something that will be interesting.

CG What are you about? What’s the mandate?

DR I don’t think I was born with a mandate. I like to help people and I’ve spent a lot of my life helping artists. One of the things I’m proud of is that I’ve been on the board of the American Anti Slavery Group. It’s a Boston based group and we’ve raised a lot of money to help end slavery in the Sudan. We fight for the freedom of people in Darfur. I am very proud of my association with that organization. I am just another guy of my generation who recognized that there were things that needed to be done.

CG Of the artists you have been associated with over the years are there some who are particularly important to you?

DR There have been dozens. I learned everything I know about art from artists. I learned nothing about art in school. One after another artists have taken the time and been generous enough to educate me. To point me to things I needed to read. To point me to things I needed to look at. To argue with me about things they thought I needed to understand. There are dozens. Literally dozens. Painters, sculptors, video artists, dancers, poets. It’s a huge list and I’m enormously and eternally grateful.

CG Are there any in particular you might mention who, for example, did one person museum shows with you?

DR Of course one of my nearest and dearest friends whom I shared a studio with as an undergraduate is Bill Viola (1951-2024). Bill is like a brother. I did his retrospective at the Whitney but only because I had to. I didn’t really believe that as a museum director you should do shows. It should be what curators do not museum directors. Once I became a museum director I really didn’t do shows. I supported my curators. I helped them do what we agreed was important to do. The Viola show we did at the Whitney went around the world. It is one that I am very proud of. I worked very closely on the Kienholz show with Walter Hopps. Walter had a stroke half way through the organizing of it. So I had to do a lot of that work. Then Ed died before it opened so that made it even more complicated. I learned a great deal from Ed. He was an amazing artist. Of course I learned a great deal from Walter as well, as a friend. A lot of curators like Walter or Jim Elliott who hired me at Berkley were incredibly important to me.

CG Haven’t you also tried your hand at art critcism?

DR Not very much. I don’t believe in writing negative stuff. Ever. I like to write about things I like. I like to write appreciation. I very rarely write criticism. In fact one of the very few times I every wrote criticism it got me in terrible trouble. I’m sure you’ve gotten over this a long time ago as a critic. I hate the idea of having to call somebody on something they didn’t do right. I hated being in that situation. I would much rather write essays about things I love and catalogues about artists whose work inspires me. If that counts as criticism then sure I have written many essays in museum catalogues. I’ve never functioned as a critic for newspapers or magazines. As I say I have written only one critical piece and I so resent, I so regret it because I feel it was so misunderstood by the target of the piece.

CG For the ICA the only solo show you curated was for Robin Winters. During an interview at the time you threw the catalogue at me with the command to read it.

DR I did that show with Robin Winters and he and I are still very good friends. (He was on Ross’s faculty at the School of Visual Arts.) Roberta Smith wrote one of the essays which was kindah cool and I did an interview with Robin. Yeah, I love Robin.

CG That was your only solo show for the ICA (in nine years). It’s probably the only show you entirely curated yourself.

DR That’s probably true. It was a beautiful catalogue and I’m glad I still have a copy of it.

CG We had fun.

DR Absolutely I look back on those years at the ICA only with great pleasure. But it was the right time for me to leave. I don’t believe in general that museum directors should be longer than ten years wherever they are. Particularly for contemporary museums they need to have their visions refreshed periodically. Great collecting museums like the Modern or the Met can stand slightly longer tenures. In general I feel there should be far more turnover on the director level and even on the curator level. It opens up different ideas and approaches. The art world is so filled with closed little cliques. It’s nice to just change channels every once in a while.

CG Do you have an opinion on Mass MoCA? You say that you visit frequently.

DR I love Mass MoCA. It’s one of my favorite museums. It’s a totally non bullshit museum. Joe Thompson, now there’s somebody who pulls rabbits out of a hat. He doesn’t have a wealthy community. He has a few people behind him who he very carefully courted. He has a great vision. Even though Mass MoCA is not what it set out to be I like what it is now. More than what it intended to be in its initial blue sky phase. It’s a great community museum on a regional level. Everybody who lives and works in Western Mass. feels comfortable there.

CG What about the current status of the Guggenheim?

DR I think it’s rebuilding itself. Under Richard (Armstrong). I think (Tom) Krens was a fucking disaster. On every level. He destroyed the image of that museum in his attempt to build the brand “Guggenheim.” The museum may never fully recover from that as it builds its brand image game in Abu Dahbi. It’s not for museums. That’s a different industry. If that’s museums then I’m glad I’m not working in them.

CG MoMA?

DR Doing much better now that it has very powerful women running the departments like Connie Butler in drawings and Ann Temkin running painting and sculpture have made an enormous difference there. I’m very happy with what I see. I’m not a fan of the building. I still don’t think they’ve got it right.

CG They have another huge atrium like that of  Art of the Americas at the MFA.

DR They’ve gotten too big. I have a hard time with museums that have gotten that big because it becomes an ordeal every time you visit. I still love the museum. I grew up on the Modern. I learned so much from it. It continues to be one of the most important museums in the world. For me the museum which I like the most right now is the Tate. I love what Nick Serota has done. Right now he’s my favorite museum director. He has been for a long time. For all the stumbles they’ve had they’ve built an enormous body of contemporary art in Great Britain unbelievable in scale and quality. I think he’s done a great job.

CG How much do you manage to keep on the circuit internationally?

DR I travel a lot because I serve on the boards of a number of foundations. I guest curate and lecture. So I get around the world. I get to China every year. I get to India every year and Europe a couple of times a year. I haven’t been to South America in a couple of years and am feeling a little out of touch there. I get to LA, the South, New Orleans. I get to Texas. I like to see what’s going around. I feel very little pressure. I don’t have hundreds of people depending on me for a living. It’s very nice not feeling the pressure of being responsible for so many people.

CG But you’ve got the band.

DR I’ve got the band but we don’t make our living on it. We only play for free.

CG What’s the band called?

DR Red.

CG You said that you got four encores at the ICA benefit.

DR It was such a great evening. OMG. I’m still glowing from that evening. It was so much fun playing in that space. Wow. Was that beautiful. The dinner was in the airport and the party was in the museum. We were originally going to play at the airport but the acoustics in that hangar would have been atrocious. You could hardly hear anybody who spoke but it was visually amazing. There was a 747 parked next to your dinner table. But we couldn’t control the acoustics so at the last minute we decided to move the music back to the theatre and I’m glad that we did.

CG Are you in touch with Milena (Kalinovska)?

DR She was there. Milena has been with the Hirshorn for years doing special programming. She did some amazing shows at the ICA. The show she did with Catherine deZegher (Inside the Visible, 1997) was so incredible.  I didn’t see that many of her shows because I was busy with the Whitney but Milena is a woman to be contended with. That was a great period with some really serious curatorial energy. Now what Jill (Medvedow) has brought about is nothing short of a miracle.

CG Milena introduced us to Rachel Whiteread and Carol Rama, as well as Malcolm X, Dress Codes and Elvis and Marilyn.

DR The fact that under Jill that building got built and paid for.

CG Do you like the building?

DR I’m a huge Diller, Scofidio and Renfro fan. I think the building functions very well. I agree that the computer learning space needs to be readapted into something else. It’s a cool space and I imagine it will function as a class room. In the gallery spaces I’ve seen some shows that look great there. I’ve seen three or four shows there and they all looked very good. You are critical that the ICA can’t be expanded. It’s how I feel about the New Museum in New York. It’s nice sometimes when museums are forced to keep their focus on shows of manageable scale.

CG They’re landlocked.

DR Yeah but what does it mean when you keep growing and growing like MoMA. It becomes impossibly big, impossibly confusing and crowded. I like the scale of the ICA right now and I hope it can stay at that scale.

CG What about the Whitney selling their building on Madison Avenue to the Met?

DR They didn’t sell anything. They leased it for a certain period of time. Which was very smart. There is no way they could have managed both spaces as they developed the new one. But then eventually maybe they can. They have the option under whoever will succeed Adam (Weinberg). Which is a long time in the future. In ten or fifteen years the Whitney has the option of saying, ok we have this place stabilized, now we’ll reopen uptown if it makes sense economically. For right now they’ve gotten out from under the financial burden of having to maintain two spaces. The plans that I’ve seen for their new space look really extraordinary. The energy of that part of town is great. My office is two blocks from the new Whitney.

CG The Meatmarket.

DR My office is on 16^th street between 8^th and 9^th Avenue. Four blocks south of me is where the new Whitney will be on the Hudson River. Then High Line is a block from my office. I love that part of town. A million people visited The High Line in the first year. In New York you can get big crowds and the Seven Line is being expanded to the Jacob Javits Convention Center. There will be a second east-west subway line. In the next fifteen years it will make the Meatmarket all that more accessible for tourists and the like. Obviously tourists are already finding their way there.

I think Adam has done the right thing. I sure hope he will. He has. It’s not what I would have done. So the Whitney is probably in better hands because I might never have done that. I don’t know if I would have had the guts to move downtown. In some weird ways I’m very conservative.