J. Carter Brown

For 23 years, J. Carter Brown (1934 - 2002) served as Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., building one of the world's greatest collections of art, and keeping it available to the public, free of charge. Brown was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where his family had been prominent since before the Revolution. His father, John Nicholas Brown, served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Truman. While living with his family in Washington, the young J. Carter Brown fell in love with the National Gallery of Art and first conceived of a career that would allow him to pursue his love for all the arts and to share them with a larger public. Brown spent his undergraduate years studying history and literature, and acquired a master's degree from Harvard Business School. In 1961, Brown joined the National Gallery as an assistant to the Director. Eight years later, at the age of 34, he was appointed Director. He more than tripled the Gallery's annual attendance, drawing record crowds with once-in-a-lifetime exhibitions like "The Treasures of Tutankhamun" and "Treasure Houses of Britain." He doubled the Gallery's exhibition space and massively enlarged its holdings, persuading collectors to donate their treasures to the nation. Critics howled when he commissioned architect I.M Pei to build a modern gallery alongside the existing neo-classical structure, but the result was an undisputed triumph, named by the American Institute of Architects as one of the ten best buildings ever built in the United States. After he retired from the National Gallery in 1992, he continued to chair the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and founded the cable television arts network Ovation. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2001 gathering in San Antonio, Texas, J. Carter Brown defines his work as a cultural administrator. He urges the Academy's student delegates to travel and study abroad. He stresses the rewards of community service and urges the students to embrace values other than the acquisition of material things. When J. Carter Brown died in 2002, he was not only mourned as the man who had transformed a great arts institution, but as a populist who had brought great art to the masses.