Michael Govan was born on 1963 and is the CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
16 Facts About Michael Govan
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Michael Govan majored in art history and fine arts at Williams College, where he met Thomas Krens, who was then director of the Williams College Museum of Art.
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Michael Govan became closely involved with the museum, serving as acting curator as an undergraduate and designing museum collateral, including catalogues, logos, and exhibition posters.
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Michael Govan served as Krens' deputy director for six years, a period that culminated in the construction and opening of the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim branch in Bilbao, Spain.
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Michael Govan supervised the reinstallation of the museum's permanent collection galleries after its extensive renovation.
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From 1994 to 2006, Michael Govan was president and director of Dia Art Foundation in New York City.
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Michael Govan successfully lobbied Washington to have the 704,000 acres in central Nevada surrounding City declared a national monument in 2015.
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In February 2006, a search committee composed of eleven LACMA trustees, led by the late Nancy M Daly, recruited Govan to run the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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Michael Govan has stated that he was drawn to the role not only because of LACMA's geographical distance from its European and east coast peers, but because of the museum's relative youth, having been established in 1961.
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Michael Govan has been widely regarded for transforming LACMA into both a local and international landmark.
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In 2006, for example, Michael Govan invited LA artist John Baldessari to design an upcoming exhibition about the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, resulting in a theatrical show that reflected the twisted perspective of the latter's topsy-turvy world.
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Michael Govan has commissioned several large-scale public artworks for LACMA's campus from contemporary California artists.
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In 2010, it was announced that Michael Govan will steer LACMA for at least six more years.
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Michael Govan's latest project is an ambitious building project, the replacement of four of the campus's aging buildings with a single new state of the art gallery building designed by architect Peter Zumthor.
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Michael Govan is married and has two daughters, one from a previous marriage.
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Michael Govan has had a private pilot's license since 1995 and keeps a 1979 Beechcraft Bonanza at Santa Monica Airport.