McDonnell Moves In

The Ulrich Museum’s new director settles in with a cup of coffee and a love for contemporary art.

One of the first things Patricia McDonnell did when her moving van arrived in Wichita in January was to unpack her coffee pot.

McDonnell, the new director at Wichita State University’s Ulrich Museum of Art, has followed her passion for art across the country: She’s been in Berkeley, California, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Tacoma, Washington, and now, here in Wichita. And if she’s learned anything from all those cross-country moves, it’s how to load a moving van.

“Keep the coffee pot close at hand,” McDonnell said as she was still surrounded by boxes in her Washington home, preparing for the three-day drive from Washington to Kansas in early January. “Always put the coffee pot where you can find it.”

But McDonnell brings far more to the Ulrich than a fresh pot of joe. Her twenty-eight years of museum experience include an eleven-year stint as curator and art history professor at the University of Minnesota’s Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis and four years as curator of the Tacoma Art Museum. She’s an expert on Marsden Hartley, an early American Modernist whose work, coincidentally, is on display at the Wichita Art Museum through April 29. McDonnell, herself, curated that traveling exhibit during her tenure at the Weisman.

“This exhibit is the best of the best of the Hartley collection at the Weisman,” McDonnell says. “And I’ll absolutely go take it in at the Wichita Art Museum. In fact, I’ll do more than that—they’ve asked me to help do some training for the tour guides, and I’ll be speaking to a group of patrons, as well.”

Immersing herself in Wichita’s art culture comes just after the coffee pot in McDonnell’s relocation plans. Long before she ever considered taking the Ulrich job, she was well aware of Wichita’s prominence in the arts. Now that she’s officially in town, she’ll waste no time in experiencing that for herself. “The Wichita Art Museum has one of the premiere collections of early American Modernism in the country,” she says. “And the Ulrich’s outdoor sculpture garden is one of the best there is. Wichita is known not just to me, but to the whole country.”

That’s just one of the reasons why she’s so excited to be here. She fell in love with the Midwest during her years in Minneapolis, she says, and is delighted to be coming back to the region. And she’s always eager for the opportunity to meet new people and the challenge of integrating herself into a new place. “Moves, for me, are both personally and intellectually rewarding,” McDonnell says. “I enjoy moving to a new environment and a new community. I enjoy learning about the quirks of a new community and learning about its culture. In the process, I learn more about American culture, in general.”
 
But the move to Wichita is also the natural next step in the evolution of her career, she says. After two decades of curatorial work, she’s ready to take her passion for art to the next level.

“I’m shifting gears from a wonderful life in the curatorial department to becoming a director,” she explains. “The longer I remain in this world, the more my priorities have shifted. I am much more aware of the social purpose of art and museums. Art can make a difference in people’s lives.”

The educational component is especially important to McDonnell—which makes a university museum like the Ulrich a perfect fit. “Education is really the mission at any museum,” she says, “but at a university museum, it is that much more conspicuous. The educational component is really front and center.”

McDonnell, who developed her own love of the arts as a child visiting museums, cathedrals and other public buildings, is most excited about the opportunity to expose young people to art and to help make it part of their lives. “I do what I do because of my upbringing,” she says. “If young people are exposed to art museums and other cultural forums, it heightens the possibility that it will become a habit for them. We have a golden opportunity to make a difference in our students’ lives.”

But it isn’t just the campus community that McDonnell wants to reach. She hopes that she will be able to use her position at the Ulrich to connect people of all ages to the wonder of art. “That’s so important to me,” she says. “My goal is to find creative ways to make the museum and its galleries more welcoming to the general public. I want to build a bridge between Wichita State University and the people of Wichita.”