Robert Wolterstorff. Image courtesy of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland has hired a new executive director as part of a restructured leadership team.

Robert Wolterstorff was most recently the executive director and chief executive officer of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. He started his new job in Maine on Monday.

On paper, Wolterstorff seems to have taken a circuitous route to a contemporary institution. His graduate studies focused on 18th-century British architectural history. From 1998 to 2010, he was the executive director of the Victoria Mansion in Portland, a National Historic Landmark that dates to the 19th century. But he said in an interview Wednesday that modern art has been his passion ever since he was a teenager, when a friend showed him Yves Klein’s “Leap into the Void,” a striking 1960 photograph that appears, through a darkroom trick, to show the artist jumping into flight from a second-story roof.

“I was mesmerized,” Wolterstorff said. “It has always been, for me, emblematic of what art is about, literally the leap into the void that artists take.”

Wolterstorff steps into a redefined role at the CMCA. His two predecessors – Suzette McAvoy, from 2010 to 2020, and Tim Peterson, from 2020 to 2023 – served as both executive director and chief curator. Interim chair Jonathan Chodosh said the board decided last year that the combined job had become too big for one person and needed to be separated. Peterson left last year at the end of a three-year contract, and the museum launched a national search for an executive director.

Chodosh said more than 30 people applied for the position, and Wolterstorff stood out from the beginning. He has a master of fine arts degree and a doctorate in art history from Princeton University, a master’s degree in art history from Williams College and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His work experience includes curatorial and research positions at prestigious institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Clark Art Institute, and the Williams College Museum of Art. He was the executive director of the Bennington Museum in Vermont from 2012 to 2019. During his tenure at the Bruce Museum, from 2019 to 2024, he led the completion of a $68 million capital campaign and the construction of a new building that opened last April.

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art moved to Rockland in 2016. Photo by Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

The CMCA currently has an annual budget of approximately $900,000, a number Chodosh expects to grow to over $1 million before long. The board is seeking additional members. The staff has been expanding educational programs for Midcoast students and is developing a virtual version that could go into schools across the state. They want to continue to diversify their exhibitions.

“Robert has grown institutions before,” Chodosh said. “He certainly grew the Bruce. He certainly grew Victoria Mansion and the Bennington. So we’re confident that he’s going to help us get to the next level.”

The museum would not disclose Wolterstorff’s salary.

One of the first responsibilities for the new executive director will be to decide on a curatorial approach. During the transition, the museum invited guest curators to organize exhibitions and has filled the calendar up until the biennial planned for the fall of 2025. Wolterstorff said he will consider whether to hire a chief curator or maintain the rotating model, and he feels that both options have merit. He intends to begin his work with a listening tour to understand the needs in the state.

“I do believe it should continue to be a place about Maine art,” he said. “We’re not about the art of the whole country or art of the world. We’re about Maine art, and I think that’s a really important distinction. We can be the best institution in the world looking at Maine art.”

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art began as an artist cooperative in 1952 and put down roots in Rockport Harbor in 1967. Wolterstorff initially moved to Maine because his wife grew up in Rockport, and he visited both the previous location and the current one. Designed by part-time Mainer Toshiko Mori, the Rockland museum opened in 2016. For an architecture buff, the building itself was also a draw.

“It shows the ambition of the place to build this building,” he said. “I respected that from the beginning.”