BRATTLEBORO -- The best thing about Sunday’s party at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center is what it isn’t.
Held to honor Mara Williams’ 20 years of service to the museum, the brunch bash was originally planned with the idea that it might be a retirement party.
"When I first arrived in 2007, the plan, such as it was, was that Mara and (business partner) Linda Rubinstein were going to phase out, and we were going to need to hire a new chief curator," said Museum Director Danny Lichtenfeld.
But since then, Williams has recommitted to staying on as curator, so Sunday’s party at the museum, which begins at noon and is open to the public, is a flat out celebration of Williams’ past, present and future at the BMAC. On the menu are champagne, catered food by Terri Ziter and perhaps roasted Mara.
Museum staff, family and friends will be on hand to hear guest speakers laud and zing the woman who’s affiliation with the museum began in 1989 with a nine-year tenure as director/curator and continues to this day -- and thankfully beyond.
"I kept thinking it was going to be my swansong. You know, after 20 years, (the museum) is my baby, and I’m the doting parent," said Williams in a telephone interview Monday morning. "Only in Brattleboro, Vermont, would I be famous. People have 20th anniversaries of instutions, I think less so, for curators."
But to think of Williams as merely a curator is to miss the point
"No single person has had a greater impact on the Brattleboro Museum than Mara Williams," said Konstantin von Krusenstiern, who served as museum director from 2004 to 2007.
It was during Krusenstiern’s tenure that the museum presented the landmark Andy Warhol exhibit that put both Brattleboro and the Brattleboro Museum on a larger map.
"I think that was the turning point for the museum into its mature phase," said Williams.
Williams was there in its adolescent days -- and she almost wasn’t there at all.
In 1989, she was in New York City, working as the assistant manager of an art gallery and wondering what to do with her degrees in theater and art and talents as a curator and manager to work. Her friend, Gary O’Neal, was on the Brattleboro Museum board and encouraged her to come for an interview.
"Why would I want to leave New York City? I’m not a country person, I’m a city girl," Williams said.
Her first trip to Brattleboro didn’t change her mind.
"It was the summer of 1989, and Canal Street was a disaster Š lots of buildings have since been restored, but back then it was a disaster. I thought, ‘I’m not moving here. This is as decrepit as Ware, Mass.,’" she said, recalling she was equally unimpressed with the museum itself. "It was dark, it was dirty, there was hardly anything in there."
Still, board members worked on her hard, and when she came up for a second interview, artist Wolf Kahn showed her the town in a better light, taking her to the co-op, where she met the artist (and Kahn’s wife) Emily Mason, who was sorting lettuce. He took her to Delectable Mountain and Hamelman’s, and board members told her if she came, she would be supported. When she talked about the offer with friends in New York, their encouragment sealed the deal.
"They said, ‘Mara, you’re being offered a directorship Š and at least you’re not being asked to move to Biloxi, Miss. It is Vermont,’" Williams said.
So here she came, with the intention of staying a few years, maybe five, and then moving on.
The museum she took over was in rough shape, on the verge of bankruptcy. Williams’ management skills were put to the test -- she had to let staff go; she and the board worked hard to raise funds.
"That board and I put a solid foundation under that museum," she said.
The museum’s growth went hand-in-hand with the burgeoning of Brattleboro’s arts scene.
"In some ways, it was predetermined; in other ways, is is really remarkable," she said. "When I got here, you had the River Gallery School, Yellow Barn, Marlboro, the Brattleboro Music Center. They were all slowly percolating at the same time. Š The fact that they all reached maturity, they all still exist Š they’re all loved and relevant really says something about Brattleboro that I didn’t figure on when I took the job."
After nine years, Williams was "at the end of what I thought I could do as director," and decided to leave to do heaven knows what. Her initial plan was to leave the museum in a few months and study art in Scotland and England. It was just a few weeks before departure, as she was taking a package to the Brattleboro Post Office, she bumped into Judge James L. Oakes, who was recently widowed. He asked her to dinner sometime and called her about an hour and a half later to set it up.
At their first dinner, Williams didn’t even realize it was a date. A romance bloomed very rapidly, cheerfully oblivious of the difference in their ages and the pending distance between them as Williams was preparing for her trip to England.
"By the time I was getting on the plane on July 3, I was totally in love with him," she said.
He proposed to her at Loch Fyne in Scotland, and they were married on New Year’s Day in 1999.
Now with her heart and roots firmly in Brattleboro, Williams began freelance curatorial work, and continued her ties to the museum by helping her successors. In 2004, the museum split the director and curatorial job, allowing Williams to stay connected to the museum in a way that better suited her interests.
"You can’t have a life and be director and curator. I would like to point out that before I met Jim Oakes I had no life," Williams said. "I lived and breathed that museum for nine years."
She’s still committed, but now in the role of chief curator, helping to conceive and mount the exhibits -- and to shed light on them for a unique audience.
"Most curators at other institutions are scholars’ scholars, and they’re there to write art history. My job, as I see it, is to use what I understand and to use my judgments about excellence and to bring that excellence to the BMAC, and then open it up to the people who are going to see it," said Williams. "It’s about passing on my enthusiasm for art to people of all ages."
Enthusiasm. If there’s one word you could use to describe Williams, it might be that one.
"She has a big, bold personality. Š I find her just an absolute pleasure to work with," said Lichtenfeld, who became museum director in 2007 and immediately appreciated working with someone who had been in his shoes and knew what we was up against.
"One of the things that’s really great for me personally is working with a chief curator who, because she was the director, has this built-in understanding and sensitivity to the issues here," Lichtenfeld said. "I never run into issues of conflict between the art side and the busines side. That’s really a treat."
For all this and more, Williams is getting the spotlight at Sunday’s brunch.
"I hear the Mara party is going to be a bash," Williams said, with relish.
It’s a chance to give her a little bit of the applause she’s earned through the years -- and a chance, at least for one person, to right a wrong.
"Often, I got the credit for things she did, and she was always so gracious about that," Krusenstiern said.
Throughout an hour-long interview, Williams was quick to share credit for the museum’s successes with others -- Judge Oakes, board members, staff, directors, family, funders, artists, community members and the woman she calls "my left and right arm," Linda Rubinstein.
"No person is a one-man band, honey," she said.
Tickets to Sunday’s brunch are $25 and are available by calling 802-257-0124, ext. 101 or office@brattleboromuseum.org.
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