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Underwritten by the Blanchard family, as in Blanchard Machinery, the cost of the exhibition is four times what the recent exhibition of furnishings and fixtures by Frank Lloyd Wright cost the museum.
The gala celebrating Turner to Cezanne is set for Saturday night, April 18. Working through all this is Dr. Todd Herman, the chief curator for the CMA and also the museum's curator of European art.
Herman was born in York, Penn., in the heart of Amish Country. His father marketed coffee while his mother ran the house. Herman's sister, two years older, and her husband live with their three children in Kansas City, Mo.
After graduating from Central York High School, where he played the saxophone (alto, tenor, and baritone) and where he played tennis, Todd enrolled in Shippensburg (Penn.) State University, planning to practice dentistry. Dropping his dentistry plans, he transferred to James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va., where he earned a B.A. in art history and a B.S. in biology. In his biology studies, he specialized in genetics. He also minored in both economics and studio art, tweaking his talent in painting and drawing.
After a short career kick- off at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., Herman worked for the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. He left the gallery for Columbia, S.C., to earn a master's degree in art history at USC, graduating in 1996.
Herman enrolled for the PhD program in art history at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve and the nearby Cleveland Museum of Art, one of America's richest art museums. The Cleveland has about $500,000,000 in its investments and more than $1 billion in all assets, not counting the art collection.
Herman's major area in his years pursuing his PhD was Italian art and architecture, 1400- 1600.
Herman worked at the Cleveland Museum and taught in Cleveland- area colleges for a few years after earning his PhD. He was an assistant professor of art history for a year at Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Va.
In 2005, he became the CMA's chief curator.
Next spring's exhibition, Turner to C ezanne, is setting a new standard for the CMA in importance and in the money involved. The first alert for the exhibition came from the American Federation of the Arts when the National Museum of Wales put out feelers to American museums to exhibit the Welsh collection on tour while the museum renovated its galleries.
Herman presented his impressions to the CMA's executive committee, pitching the exhibition's significance in art and potential visitor count. Fortunately for Columbia, the executive committee agreed.
