The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens announced April 8 that director and CEO Andrea Barnwell Brownlee will retire May 1.
Brownlee took the position as George W. and Kathleen I. Gibbs Director and CEO in December 2020.
Kimberly Noble, the museum’s chief financial officer, will serve as interim director and CEO while a national search is conducted for a permanent successor, according to a news release.
“I have been honored to lead the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens and am proud it is increasingly regarded as a vibrant cultural hub of Jacksonville that is welcoming to all,” Brownlee said in the release.
Under her leadership, the Cummer Museum received nationally recognized awards, including a $1 million capacity grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a Leadership in Art Museums award by a consortium of funders including the Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Pilot House Philanthropy and the Alice L. Walton Foundation to establish the Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole Associate Curator position.
Michael Munz, chair of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens Board of Trustees, said Brownlee’s leadership “has elevated the Museum’s standing as a premier regional art museum that has hosted vibrant and engaging exhibits from around the world, has been nothing short of extraordinary.”
Brownlee, an art historian and curator, was director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta for nearly 20 years before joining the Cummer.
During her tenure at the Cummer, the museum has presented a series of dynamic nationally and internationally traveling exhibitions including “Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories,” “Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 to 1960,” “Flamboyance! A Topiary Menagerie,” the museum’s first-ever garden exhibition, and “Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama,” the release said.
Noble has served as CFO at the museum since June 2021 and has more than 20 years of experience managing critical finance roles for nonprofits as well as Fortune 500 companies, including serving as CFO of St. Johns Country Day School and senior finance roles at Regency Centers, Winn-Dixie, Johnson & Johnson and CSX Transportation.