Out of the Closet
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The library will move its holdings of over 12,000 books and some 800 periodicals to 5,500 square feet that formerly housed a card shop and a liquor store. “We were simply bursting at the seams in our old facility,” explains Russell Kracke, Gerber/Hart’s managing director. Kracke predicts that the Granville location will be adequate for at least another seven years.
The Butler Didn’t Do It
Cook was an old friend of Fitzpatrick’s; the two men met in the late 70s when Cook was director of the California Arts Council and Fitzpatrick was president of the California Institute of the Arts. After that Cook served as associate director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University and executive director of the (Merce) Cunningham Dance Foundation. Though Cook had been at the museum too briefly to make his presence felt in the larger community, sources familiar with his short tenure say he’d proved adept at handling day-to-day operations while Fitzpatrick was out campaigning for his exhibition plans and building renovations. Apparently Cook demonstrated better interpersonal skills than his boss as well. “He was definitely easier to work for,” notes one source. With so many projects in motion Fitzpatrick will have to move quickly to fill the vacancy left by Cook’s death. Reports one former MCA employee, “A lot of people are nervous.”
