1 hour ago
1
By Javacia Harris Bowser | The Birmingham Times
For Chantal Drake, becoming interim director of the Birmingham Museum of Art (BMA) was a full-circle moment.
Drake, the James Milton and Sallie R. Johnson Deputy Director for the museum, assumed the role as interim director on August 1. She was appointed to the position by the BMA board after Graham C. Boettcher, Ph.D., the R. Hugh Daniel Director and CEO, stepped down after 20 years of service to the institution to take the helm at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Drake takes on this role at a pivotal moment as the museum celebrates its 75th anniversary.
Drake has served as deputy director at the BMA since January 2023, but her relationship with the museum began years earlier. The BMA sparked her fondness for art museums when she was a student studying art history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
“The Birmingham Museum of Art was really like an extension of my education,” the Huntsville, Alabama, native told the Birmingham Times. “It was always such an enlightening, positive, and inspiring experience to be here. And it was free, which was great for a college student!”
The museum, she said, helped her build on what she was learning in the classroom in a tangible way.
“I just loved it,” she continued. “It was a place to go where I left feeling better than when I’d walked in, and that has always stayed with me.”
The Big Picture
Drake carried the idea that museums should enlighten, inspire and uplift with her when she served as Director of Development and Communications at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, in Memphis, Tennessee. In this role, her official duties included overseeing fundraising, membership, corporate partnerships, and institutional communications. But she felt compelled to do much more.
“I’ve never just seen a job description and thought this is all that I’m supposed to be doing,” she said. “I have always looked to see where I can be a factor beyond my role.”
She kept that same mindset at the BMA, and that has paid off as she’s stepped into her new role as interim director.
“There are certain members of the leadership team that I was meeting with regularly that did not report to me, but I wanted to be a thought partner,” she explained. “Also, I just wanted to understand more about what was going on in the areas where I didn’t have direct oversight. I have always just been interested in the big picture. I’ve always been interested in understanding more and wanting to have a hand in that. To have an impact in an organization, you’ve got to step outside of where maybe a boundary or a line may have been created.”
Learning Curve
That said, Drake admits that being interim director has come with a learning curve.
“As deputy, you would hear reports, and you would hear a summary of what has happened in different departments, but not the day-to-day,” she explained. “There are areas of this job where I was aware of them but was not in them. So now it’s been a process of understanding what those areas need, how I can support the people who are working within them, and what needs to improve, what needs to change, and looking at it with fresh eyes.”
She’s now involved in major decisions such as approving requests for loans of pieces from the BMA collection to other museums. She’s also a part of the work to repatriate some of the works in the BMA’s historical Native American collection. (The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act is a 1990 U.S. federal law that requires federal agencies and institutions receiving federal funds to return Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred items, and cultural patrimony to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated tribes.)
Chantal Drake is involved in major decisions such as approving requests for loans of pieces from the BMA collection to other museums. (Provided)Roll Call
Also at the top of Drake’s agenda is supporting and promoting Roll Call: Two Hundred Years of Black American Art. This new exhibition, which runs through January 17, 2027, features 99 works by Black artists from the early nineteenth century to the present, curated entirely from the museum’s permanent collection.
Drake says the museum’s commitment to diversity is another reason she’s drawn to the institution.
“That was always very attractive about the BMA to me,” she said, “and Roll Call — this exhibition and what it means, what it says about the Birmingham Museum of Art and the work that we’ve been doing over the past 60 years to collect these works is a story that I think is really important that we tell at this time in this city.
“When so much of the work that’s been happening around diversity is now being whispered rather than shared loudly,” she continued, “I feel like this creates a narrative around why that work is important, why that sustained work has always been important, and that we can’t lose sight of that, even in the midst of everything that’s happening right now.”
Drake believes that Roll Call speaks not only to the diversity of art but to Black culture as a whole.
“The diversity of this exhibition, the diversity of the work that Black artists produce, the diversity of perspectives and lived experiences that are represented in these works — I think it really tells a story,” she said. “We all know that Black people are not a monolith, but it really goes to show, visually, how artists and how art can speak to the diversity of Black people and Black culture.”
Looking Ahead
The BMA board has launched its search for a new director and CEO, and while Drake hasn’t decided whether she’ll pursue the position, she knows that regardless of her title, she’s excited for the museum’s future.
She’s looking forward to upcoming shows like From Scratch, an exhibition on art and food set for 2027.
She’s looking forward to continuing to share her love of art with her son, Peyton James.
“He grew up in art museums,” she said of her son, 19, who’s currently a student at UAB. “I started working at art museums when he was four, and he was always there. When he takes girls on dates, he takes them to art museums.”
Her son’s favorite artist is Kehinde Wiley.
“I have a series of pictures in my phone of different museum visits where he’s taking a picture of a Kehinde Wiley [painting], and I’m taking a picture of him,” Drake shared. “It is my favorite thing.”
And Drake is looking forward to others one day loving the Birmingham Museum of Art as much as she does. She wants Birmingham residents to feel a sense a pride for the BMA and what it’s been able to accomplish in a mid-size city in the Southeast. She wants to see a shift in visitors’ attitudes, too.
“The museum is such a pleasant surprise for people who travel from outside of the city,” Drake said, noting that visitors are wowed by the quality of the BMA’s collection. “I would love to see that no longer be a surprise.”
Instead, she wants the museum known far and wide for its collection, its exhibitions and for its programming designed to help visitors better engage with the art.
“I want the expectation walking into the museum to be this is going to be great, and I am going to learn something,” she said. “I’m going to see something I’ve not seen before, and I’m going to have a deeper understanding and appreciation, not just for the visual arts, but for what this museum has done in the last 75 years.”
To learn more about the Birmingham Museum of Art, visit artsbma.org.
