The Katonah Museum of Art

You Can’t Spell Museum Without ‘U’ And ‘ME’

PHOTO: MARGARET FOX

That spectacular white Modern building - that’s actually shaped like a traditional New England barn - on Route 22 in Katonah, where Jay Street meets 22, next door to the American Legion Hall - is the Edward Larrabee Barnes’ designed Katonah Museum of Art.

The Museum was founded in 1954 by a group of local women, led by Inge Brouard Brown as the first President, meeting upstairs in the Katonah Library. They had the audacious idea that they could bring the best of the art world to their community. Inge brought back posters from a trip to Europe for their first exhibition. They engaged prominent artists like Alexander Calder and Jacob Lawrence for their exhibitions. And, using their connections in the art world, they started to borrow works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney. One story has it that when they first arranged to borrow an important piece of art from the Met, they showed up in a station wagon to transport the treasure. …The KMA’s Edward Larrabee Barnes building opened in 1990 under the leadership of Board President Linda Nordberg, and George “Spike” Beitzel.

The KMA’s Director and Chief Curator, Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, declares, “We still have that ethos and spirit of ambition, vision, and chutzpah. …And just to make sure the Museum stays on mission, a few of those founders remain active, including Inge, who’s 96 and lives in Katonah. Other early Museum leaders include Trustee Emerita Betty Himmel,who lives in Purchase, and Trustee Emerita Yvonne Pollack, who headed the Education program at the KMA and founded the Pollack Family Learning Center, and who lives in Bedford.”

“From the beginning, the Trustees decided that the KMA would not have a permanent collection, seeking instead the flexibility to present as broad a scope of artistic practices as possible and focus all resources to develop extensive programming aimed at bringing the best of the visual arts to the community,” Michelle explains. “On average, we have over 25,000 visitors each year, including over 100 school groups.”

“We host three major exhibitions each year, as well as our annual Young Artists exhibition - which is now in its 43rd edition. This beloved initiative features  400 high school senior student artists, from 40 schools in 5 counties, with 800 guests on average attending the opening,” Michelle details.

“The current focus skews towards Modern and Contemporary Art, and in particular emerging and underrepresented artists. When we do focus on historic periods, we provide a contemporary lens to offer a fresh context to understand the material. And we’re always interested in presenting exceptional local private collections to the public and highlighting artists with a local connection. Most recently, this summer we partnered with the William Louis-Dreyfus Collection in Mount Kisco to organize a geometric abstraction show featuring five women artists from their collection. And last summer we organized a major retrospective of the celebrated photographer Jonathan Becker, a Bedford resident.”   

PHOTO: JASON MANDELLA

“And we have a broad variety of programs for everyone in the community!” Michelle entreats. “The KMA is known for our strong educational programming for people of every age, including a robust internship program for high schoolers and undergrads. We offer free docent tours, and an open studio in the Pollack Family Learning Center that’s accessible to all visitors and stocked with plenty of art supplies. We have monthly ‘Drop-In Drawing’ sessions in our galleries, with a master leading the classes. Our exhibitions are accompanied by a series of lectures and panels featuring world renown scholars, like the program we offered last spring with Met Curator Sarah Graff around Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist. This exhibition will continue on a national tour in partnership with the Art Bridges Foundation. We have special programs for seniors, and for pre-K and young children including our Family Days and School’s Out/Art’s In program. We pride ourselves on our outreach programs working in conjunction with local organizations such as Neighbors Link and Head Start. Our poet-in-residence, Pamela Hart, goes into the public schools for our semester-long Thinking Through the Arts program, and the local correctional facilities as part of our Building Bridges: Prison Arts initiative to teach ekphrastic poetry inspired by our exhibitions program. And, we are certified as a Neurodivergent Supportive Organization in partnership with the Inclusive Initiative. …We strive to be inclusive in everything we do.”

Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe joined KMA as Executive Director in August 2022 before becoming Director and Chief Curator in January 2025. “I was born in Michigan and was interested in visual and performing arts from the time I was a kid,” Michelle recalls. “We moved to Toronto after I finished 7th grade and stayed for three years. I went to boarding school at Cranbrook Kingswood in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and really took advantage of their strong arts curricula. Around the time I started college my parents moved back to Shanghai for my father’s work. I went to Mount Holyoke and majored in Modern Cultural Studies which incorporated Art History, Studio Art, Literature, and Dance, and did a junior year abroad in Paris which really supercharged my passion for art. During the summers I interned at galleries in New York City. And then, quite a few years later, in 2004, I got my Masters in Art History from Columbia University, and was the first there to write a thesis on Contemporary Chinese Art.”

PHOTO: JASON MANDELLA (RIGHT)

“I started my professional career working at the Alexander Gallery in Manhattan, and was then awarded a one year Edward & Sally Van Leer Fellowship at the Museum of Modern Art with my time being split between the Department of Painting and Sculpture and the Museum Archives…which led to my staying at MOMA in ‘P&S’ for almost a decade, working my way up from Administrative Assistant, to Research Assistant, to Curatorial Assistant. I left in 2006 and, after a brief period consulting for the Benenson Family, took on the post of running the studio of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who at the time was co-heading the creative team for the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. During this time, among other projects, I managed his 2008 mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim that traveled to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing as part of the cultural olympiad. After leaving Cai Studio, I served as a Director at Pace Prints before embarking on independent curatorial work in Beijing and teaching modern and contemporary Chinese art in the SUNY system. I jumped back into Museum curating first at the Hunter College Art Galleries, and then in 2012 joined the Asia Society as Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art. Across my 10 year tenure there I became Director of Asia Society Museum and Vice President for Global Artistic Programs, supporting the Arts and cultural programming across the organization’s 14 global centers. In 2017, when our son Harrison was 3, my husband, Edward, and I moved from Manhattan to Weston. And in 2022, when the Executive Directorship here at KMA became available, James Snyder, who’s the Director of the Jewish Museum and on the Board of KMA, and a Pound Ridge local, recruited me.”

“And to answer the question every art-informed person asks me, ‘yes’, it’s that Mapplethorpe,” Michelle, with a smile, repeats the explanation she has to give all the time. “Robert Mapplethorpe was my husband Edward’s much-older brother, and after Edward graduated from Stony Brook he became Robert’s assistant…before becoming quite a photographer in his own right. I met Edward at a birthday party in 1996, and our son Harrison just turned 11.”

“My job is to highlight what makes the KMA stand apart - and, first and foremost, that’s the quality of our exhibitions and the depth of our programming,” Michelle sets out. “Our work has to move the needle to be relevant to the world around us. We have to be educational and entertaining. I believe the KMA fulfills a key role in featuring and making available meaningful art and culture at a local level, and in bringing people in the community together.”

“We set our exhibition planning three years out, and each exhibition takes at least a solid year of managing a million details to get ready. And we partner on a number of our exhibitions in order to provide a broader profile to our work, engage new audiences, and make the workload and cost more manageable,” Michelle explains.

PHOTO: MARGARET FOX

“Our current exhibition Shen Wei: STILL/MOVING  has been organized across two venues in partnership with The Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Fund allowing us a deeper  engagement with communities across Westchester County and beyond. The exhibition, on view through April 19, 2026, considers Shen Wei’s visionary career as a dancer, choreographer, visual artist, and global cultural ambassador. Comprising two parts, it illuminates the full scope of the artist’s practice since his arrival to the United States from China in 1995, offering viewers rare access to his immersive paintings and short films, and video highlights of the Shen Wei Dance Arts repertoire,” Michelle details.

ABOVE: SHEN WEI (B. 1968 IN HUNAN, CHINA. LIVES AND WORKS IN NEW YORK, NY, U.S.A. AND PARIS, FRANCE). BRUSH MOVEMENT AND MUSIC NO. 4, 2023. ACRYLIC ON BOARD, 36 X 60 IN. (91 X 152 CM). COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST. © SHEN WEI ; PHOTOS: GABE PALACIO

“As another important example, this summer we are collaborating with Friends of John Jay Homestead and the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation on an exhibition that illuminates the Founding period through furniture, decorative arts, and other material culture in conjunction with America’s Semiquincentennial celebration,” Michelle adds.

“I’m also working to build our publication program,” Michelle adds. “Our partnership with Yale University Press provides international distribution of our publications, including our recent Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist, enabling  global access to our scholarship. This book is now available through outlets like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, which allows incredible reach and profile raising opportunities. Through a partnership with Phaidon, the KMA now serves as an outlet for their gorgeous art and culture publications. The publishing ventures provide a new revenue stream for the Museum.”

“At the end of the day the scope of our ambitions comes down to funding,” Michelle continues. “Our most significant income comes from individual gifts, which is paramount for survival in the current fundraising climate given the recent federal government funding cuts and consequently fierce competition for a limited pool of foundation support. Our Memberships and Patrons Circle subscriptions provide steady and welcome support, and with the arrival of our new Director of Institutional Advancement, Nazanine Scheuer, we will be revamping our membership benefits to grow the program. Our Director’s Circle is an intimate events-based group for those who want to engage more deeply into the global art world with me. The KMA was founded by the community for the community and we’re grateful to have the loyal and meaningful support of local families, like the  Alfieri, Alpert, Beitzel, Benton, Bryan, Cecil, Coniaris, Davies, Diebold, Durst, Evnin, Firth, Foubister, Gold, Grimes, Gund, Himmel, Intinarelli, Jenkel, Lauren, Markel, Moore, Morris, Mullin, Nordberg, Parsons, Pollack, Rosenberg, Safir, Samberg, Simpson, Wildmann, and Zinman families, to name just a few. …But fundraising remains a constant challenge! We have a modest endowment but by and large we need to actively fundraise for all of our programmatic work in addition to keeping the lights on and the doors open. We hold an annual Gala, which will be held this year on March 27, 2026, at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, that helps to raise a solid portion of our general operating budget. There are many exciting initiatives coming down the pike and opportunities for engagement. I’d love to get more people from the community involved and am always available to meet to discuss opportunities for collaboration  or elaborate on avenues of support. We’re entering a particularly exciting phase as we embark on a new strategic plan. As part of this roadmap, we are planning for a capital campaign to be launched around the KMA’s 75th Anniversary in 2029. ...In particular, we’ve outgrown our footprint and need new dedicated program and event space…necessitating a substantial addition to the building. We’d also like to endow the curatorial staff positions so that we can dedicate fundraising efforts towards our programming.”

PHOTO: MARGARET FOX

“I invite everyone to come and visit the Katonah Museum of Art,” Michelle entreats. “There’s always something new to be discovered here. The arts have the power to unite, delight, and transform. Museums bring peoples and cultures together, which is needed now more than ever. As we look to the future, I’m excited for the KMA’s continued role as a resource for artists and the communities we serve–through our innovative exhibitions and education initiatives that offer accessible and inspiring programming for all ages, and serve as a meaningful platform for community engagement.”  

 …What started as the audacious idea of a group of local women that they could bring the best of the art world to their community…is today the reality at the Katonah Museum of Art!