This month marks Pam Myers’ 15th year as director of the Asheville Art Museum. The native New Yorker took a leap when she left The Guggenheim for Asheville. Now, she can’t imagine being anywhere else.

by Ursula Gullow . photo by Matt Rose

Since 1974, not a week has gone by that Pam Myers hasn’t set foot inside a museum. She works eight hours a day in one, hangs out in them (her own and others’) for fun, and visits museums large and small when she travels. Truly, after 15 years as executive director of the Asheville Art Museum and previous career stops at places like The Guggenheim in New York City, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh and the de Young museum in San Francisco, it’s hard to argue that anyone has spent more time in museums than she has. Museums, it turns out, are Myers’ life.

Her lifelong dedication to them helps to explain why she’s so excited about the Asheville Art Museum’s recent ArtWORKS expansion project. Depending on funding for the $24 million project, the art museum would double in size and expand into Pack Place as early as 2013. The plan for a glittering, modern 52,000-square-foot building, designed primarily by Ennead Architects of New York, was officially unveiled last December. It got unanimous approvals from the Pack Square Park Conservancy and the Asheville Downtown Commission. Myers won’t say how much the museum has raised so far toward its financial goal (“We’re in the quiet phase of the campaign,” she says), but she did say she and the museum board are working with major donors.

The extra room will allow the museum to curate and host more travelling exhibitions and provide gallery space to display works from the museum’s permanent collection. In its current space, according to Myers, the museum is only able to display about three percent of its current collection of some 2,700 paintings. Ultimately, a larger museum will mean more visitors and commerce to Asheville. Besides, Myers says of the blueprint for a sleek, light-filled space: “It’s time for the city to have a 21st century piece of architecture. Who better to do that than the art museum?”

When Myers stepped into the role of executive director back in 1995, she brought years of experience at big urban museums, among them The Museum of the City of New York. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was a New Yorker, Phillip Broughton, who convinced her to come to Asheville. Broughton, an attorney who moved to Asheville from New York City in 1993, found himself at the head of the Asheville Art Museum’s board. A longtime art lover and museum-goer, he knew what a good museum should feel like, and the Asheville Art Museum simply wasn’t there. “At the time, the museum was nice but it was sort of—foundering,” Broughton says. “It was not in good financial shape. It was not a very lively place. There weren’t many crowds or visitors.” But he sensed that the museum had tremendous potential, and Myers, with her combination of art-world connections and enthusiasm for mid-sized museums, was just the person to help it realize that potential. “Midsize museums are crucial,” Myers says. “Ultimately, they serve many more people in this country than the big museums. Your hometown museum helps shape your experience of visual arts.”

To celebrate her 15 years as its leader, the museum is currently displaying The Director’s Cut, a selection of artwork Myers culled from the museum’s permanent collection—no easy task. The Director’s Cut spans a broad range of artwork—from Cherokee baskets to daguerreotypes, glass sculpture, collage, painting, etching, Modernist paintings and Postmodern sculptures. There are also a handful of Black Mountain College scholars represented, like John Cage, Kenneth Snelson, Jasper Johns and Josef Albers. “What interests me are the stories associated with each one,” says Myers, pointing to a Jose de Creeft sculpture, a sensuous carving of a face in stone. (She took a class with de Creeft at the New York City Art Students League.) “This is the first time this has ever been shown publically,” Myers says. “I think it’s just breathtaking.”

Myers grew up in Westchester County, New York, and attributes her innate interest in the arts to a family that was “very culturally oriented.” Early on, a high school industrial arts teacher inspired her, and then later, when she was studying environmental design at Cornell University, she worked as an intern for the college’s Herbert Johnson Museum. It was the beginning of her love affair with museums. She ended up devoting all her free time and class projects to it. “I was hooked,” she says. “Museums are places of inspiration and gathering; places that honor the maker and that explore creativity. They are havens where all kinds of dialogue can happen.”

Museums also have the express duty to the community of being stewards of a permanent art collection, mostly grown through private donations and purchases. The Collectors' Circle, a group of WNC philanthropists, is currently responsible for much of the buying for the Asheville Art Museum’s permanent collection. Members pay dues and select artwork that the museum’s board of directors and curators deem worth investing in. Another group, Art Nouveaux, attracts members who are new to art collecting.

A timeline of Myers' influence at the Asheville Art Museum is evident in a series of framed announcements in a hallway on the museum’s top floor. “This community has shown itself to be open to all modes of expression without censorship,” says Myers, referring to an incendiary exhibit, a Klan room installation by William Christenberry from 2008, or the post-apocalyptic paintings of McKendree Robbins Long from 2002.

Other personal highlights include three exhibits culled from The Whitney’s permanent collection, a tattoo art exhibition and an appearance last year by the art duo Christo and Jeanne Claude. Myers admits it’s hard to choose a favorite exhibition. “I always like the last one that closed and am always anticipating the next one that opens,” she says.