If you're looking for excitement from Tim Schiffer - the Figge Art Museum executive director who started on August 1 - don't talk to him. Instead, just look at the walls.
In our interview on January 25, the soft-spoken Schiffer articulated a modest plan for the Figge, but one that visitors will be able to see for themselves in "clusters" of exhibits that play off each other.
Schiffer's predecessor, Sean O'Harrow - who left after three years at the Figge to head the University of Iowa Museum of Art in November 2010 - believed that the Figge needed to emphasize education above all else (including being an art museum) and that the endowment needed to be built from $5 million to somewhere between $20 million and $50 million.
Because the process of developing a strategic plan for the Figge is just getting underway, the new executive director didn't offer measurable goals in those areas. But Schiffer - who had been executive director of California's Museum of Ventura County since 1999 - has already put his stamp on the museum in a different way.
