His efforts also expanded the Straus Center for Conservation, forming a partnership with the Whitney Museum that brought a well-known expert in art conservation to form a new Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at Harvard.

Once Cuno leaves, Marjorie B. Cohn, who has worked for HUAM for 41 years, will serve as the interim acting director, a role she filled 11 years ago before a search committee chose Cuno.

She says she hopes a replacement will be selected soon who can lead the museums through the important upcoming set of decisions permanently—rather than in an interim capacity.

“I am glad to be the acting director, but I don’t want to be director, and I don’t want to be acting director for long,” she says.

Still, she says she believes the search may last until the beginning of 2004. When she last served as interim director, she held that job for 11 months.

Proposals for Change

But she says renovations to the museums may not be able to wait for the appointment of a new director.

To show the urgent need for improvements, Cohn holds an antiquated light-switch fixture from the Fogg in her hands. On the back, one wire is missing, and the other is old and rusty.

“This building was built in 1927,” she says. “It has never been rewired, never been replumbed.... Something needs to be done.”

Around six years ago, art museum administrators had planned for renovations to the Fogg complex to take place this year.

As a result, a large portion of the museums’ holdings—the Grenville L. Winthrop collection—will leave the museum in January to travel around the world for the next two years.

But improvements to the Fogg were placed on the back burner, while Harvard focused its energy on the now-defunct plans for a new museum and other building projects.

Now, with the Riverside museum project abandoned, the focus has shifted back to Harvard’s existing museums buildings, Cuno says.

But Cuno, who is leaving for London just as these plans get underway, says he is concerned that the absence of a permanent director could slow the process.

“The big question is what my leaving will do to this,” he says. “Will the University suspend consideration of options on this site until a new director is found, which I think would be a mistake?”