GLENS FALLS, N.Y. — The Hyde Collection Board of Trustees announced today that Erin B. Coe will leave the position of Museum director later this summer to accept a position as Director of the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University.
Coe
A national search will be conducted for a new director, said Karl Seitz, chairman of the Hyde Board of Trustees. Ms. Coe will leave The Hyde in late July.
The board also announced that Anne Saile, an accomplished non-profit CEO and founder of The Saile Group LLC, a business development and leadership consulting firm, has been named interim director. Ms. Saile is the former president of Bellevue Woman’s Center in Schenectady. She has served on numerous boards and blue ribbon panels, is founding chair of the Women@Work Executive Advisory Board for Hearst, immediate past president of the Board of Directors of the Center for Women in Government and Civil Society, and founding member of the Forum for Executive Women.
“This is a bittersweet moment for The Hyde,” Seitz said. “We are delighted to see Erin take the next big step in what is already a brilliant career. Her leadership of The Hyde, particularly the establishment of the new Feibes & Schmitt Gallery for Modern and Contemporary art, has been extraordinary. Erin has created a platform for future growth and opportunity for The Hyde. As her colleagues and friends, we will miss our daily contact with a vibrant, optimistic, visionary spirit and we wish her only the best.”
Ms. Coe helped The Hyde secure one of the largest gifts in its history, $11 million in Modern art and cash from Schenectady architect Werner Feibes and his late partner, James Schmitt. She then led a successful campaign to raise $500,000 more in private contributions and foundation support to expand the museum and build a new gallery to showcase Modern art, the first new exhibition space at The Hyde in more than 28 years.
Even before her appointment as director, Ms. Coe, while serving as chief curator, brought The Hyde national attention when she assembled a first-of-its-kind exhibition of iconic American artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of Lake George. The exhibition brought together more than 50 paintings from public and private collections and drew laudatory national media coverage and record-breaking attendance.
“Erin Coe will long be remembered as the director who took The Hyde to great new heights, vastly expanded our permanent collection of Modern art, built a beautiful new gallery, organized outstanding exhibitions that attracted big crowds, and strengthened The Hyde’s ties to our community,” Mr. Seitz said.
Ms. Coe said: “The Hyde will always be my first love. I grew up here professionally, and I am indebted to the Hyde’s trustees, staff, members, and volunteers for the support they have given to me as I pursued my professional dreams. The Hyde Collection is a national treasure located in a small community, and it has been a great professional honor to contribute to its growth and success.”
Saile
Ms. Saile is an accomplished executive who has spoken nationally on high-impact leadership, effective business models, governance, ethics, and creating excellence in non-profit organizations. At Bellevue, one of only two non-profit, independent hospitals for women in the nation, she turned around the troubled finances of the institution and became one of the most highly recognized advocates for the health care needs of women and children. Before her service at Bellevue, she was the executive director of the New York State Office of Professional and Medical Conduct.
The Hyde Collection is one of the Northeast’s leading small art museums with distinguished collections of European, American, Modern, and Contemporary art. Its permanent collection of nearly 4,000 works spans centuries and consists of paintings, drawings,
graphics, sculpture, furniture, and decorative arts. The core collection, acquired by Museum founders Louis and Charlotte Hyde, includes works by such artists as Sandro Botticelli, El Greco, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and American artists Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, and James McNeill Whistler. The Museum’s collection of Modern and Contemporary art features works by artists including Josef Albers, Dorothy Dehner, Sam Gilliam, Adolph Gottlieb, Grace Hartigan, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, George McNeil, Robert Motherwell, Ben Nicholson, Robert Rauschenberg, and Bridget Riley. The Hyde Collection presents changing exhibitions in its four galleries, as well as lectures, cultural events, family activities, and school programming in its modern museum complex and historic house at 161 Warren St., Glens Falls. It opened as a museum fifty years ago, when Mrs. Hyde established a trust to keep the home open to the community in perpetuity.
Ms. Coe initially joined the Hyde in 1999 and was with the museum for 15 years, leaving as the Chief Curator in 2014 to focus on her doctoral degree in the history of art and architecture at Boston University. Upon her return, she was appointed Director of The Hyde Collection in April 2015.
Also at The Hyde
To Distribute and Multiply: The Feibes & Schmitt Gift features more than forty works of art from some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. To Distribute and Multiplyis a selection chosen from the collection of Werner Feibes and the late James Schmitt, who donated their 160-piece collection to the Museum. The exhibition demonstrates who Messrs. Feibes and Schmitt were as art lovers and collectors, and features the works of Jean Arp, Josef Albers, Grace Hartigan, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Man Ray, Louise Nevelson, George Rickey, and Bridget Riley, among others. The exhibition is open through the end of the year.
