By Rod MacNeil, Berkeley Art Museum
Posted September 8, 1999

Kevin Consey. Ben Stillwell photo.

Kevin E. Consey has been named director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Consey is the former director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and the Newport Harbor Museum. His appointment is effective Jan. 1, 2000.

Consey will become the fourth director of the museum, which was founded in 1965 and moved to its current location on Bancroft Way, adjacent to the campus, in 1970.

"I am pleased and honored to be joining the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive as director in January 2000," said Consey. "I look forward to continuing the work of my predecessors and the institution's staff in improving one of the great university museums in the United States and leading the museum/film archive through the challenge of mitigating severe seismic challenges.

"I hope to teach as well as lead the museum and look forward to working with a great faculty and supportive administration, as well as a generous and knowledgeable board of trustees."

Consey comes to the museum with more than 20 years experience in American art museums, culminating in his nine-year tenure as director and chief executive officer of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. At that museum, Consey was responsible for conceiving, planning and executing a major $72.5 million building and endowment campaign, which resulted in a 220,000-square-foot building designed by architect Josef Paul Kleihues that opened to the public in July 1996.

As director, Consey increased both the museum's operating budget and membership by more than 400 percent, as well as adding to the scope of the museum's permanent collection with significant major gifts from Gerald Elliott, Joseph R. Shapiro and the Lannan Foundation.

Before joining the Museum of Contemporary Art, Consey had served as director of the Newport Harbor Art Museum, in Newport Beach, California. Prior to this, he was director of the San Antonio Museum of Art, in San Antonio, Texas. Consey successfully instigated building programs at both of these museums, including the plans for a new museum building at Newport, and overseeing the design and construction of a 70,000-square-foot, $12.1 million adaptive re-use of historic National Register buildings for the San Antonio Museum of Art.

September 8 - 14, 1999 (Volume 28, Number 5)
Copyright 1999, The Regents of the University of California.
Produced and maintained by the Office of Public Affairs at UC Berkeley.
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