CINCINNATI.- The Taft Museum of Art embarks on a new and exciting era with today’s announcement that Eric McCauley Lee will be the Museum’s new director. Lee will be the fifth director in the museum’s 75-year history.

Lee is currently the director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum at the University of Oklahoma. Under his leadership, the museum saw the renovation and remodeling of its current building, and construction and opening of a new, 34,000-square foot wing, designed by architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen. During Lee’s time at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum, the museum witnessed dramatic increases in attendance and membership.

“The search firm we used talked to more than 150 potential candidates for the Taft job,” said Joseph Hale, chair of the search committee. “The Search Committee reviewed 50 candidate resumes and interviewed a dozen very qualified individuals. Eric Lee emerged as the clear, unanimous choice of the Search Committee because of his strong academic background in art history, coupled with his experience running a museum for the past nine years during a building project. We look forward to an exciting future at the Taft under Eric's dynamic leadership.”

“I am deeply honored to have been selected by Joe Hale and the Search Committee to lead the Taft during the next phase of its distinguished history,” said Lee. “I am especially thrilled to be working with the museum’s world-class collections set in such an architecturally and historically important house. The Taft is a jewel among America’s museums, and the recent renovation and expansion, accomplished during the directorship of Phillip Long, will enable the museum to organize increasingly ambitious exhibitions and programs. I look forward to working with Paul Chellgren and the Taft’s board of directors, the Museum staff, and the people of Cincinnati.”

At his current museum, Lee oversaw a vast expansion of the museum’s permanent collection, with the addition of more than 1,500 important works, including the Weitzenhoffer Bequest, the largest and most significant collection of French Impressionism ever given to an American public university. Other notable gifts include two major collections of Southwestern art, collections of photography and Native American art, and paintings by, among others, Ivan Albright, Radcliffe Bailey, John Singleton Copley, Jean Dubuffet, Sam Francis, Walt Kuhn, and Maurice Prendergast. Most recently, the museum received a monumental outdoor bronze by Fernando Botero. The collection is now among the strongest university-based art museums in the country.

“We are so pleased that Eric Lee will be joining the Taft Museum of Art,” said Paul Chellgren, chairman of the Museum’s board of directors. “His strong academic and museum administrative background will be great assets to the Museum as it celebrates its 75th anniversary and moves into an important new phase of its history. Eric, his wife, Rima, a writer with a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Yale, and their two young sons will be wonderful additions to the Cincinnati community. ”

During Lee’s time as director, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum mounted dozens of special exhibitions ranging from early American decorative arts to minimalism. Lee increased the museum’s program offerings, establishing a film series, weekly concerts and an endowed lecture series. He co-authored The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma: Selected Works (2004).

Lee is a native of North Carolina. He graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in art history. He also received his Ph.D. in art history from Yale. Lee has worked at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Conn., where he curated the exhibition J.M.W. Turner and Printmaking.