Biography: Lloyd E. Herman, Arts Administrator

Lloyd Eldred Herman (born 1936) is an arts administrator, curator and museum planner who is an acknowledged expert on contemporary craft. He is best known for being the founding Director of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.

Early Life & Education

Lloyd Herman is an Oregon native, attending elementary and high school near Corvallis. After graduation in 1954, he enrolled at Oregon State College (now University) with the hopes of becoming an actor, or a teacher. His education was interrupted by 2 years active duty in the U.S. Navy. On his return to Oregon, he enrolled as a junior at the University of Oregon in Eugene, majoring in Speech and Drama. He went to Washington D.C. to enroll in the acting program at Catholic University of America for his senior year. He was not accepted, instead enrolling at The American University, where he graduated with a BS degree in 1960.

Career

Smithsonian

Lloyd Herman joined the staff of the Smithsonian Institution in 1966 as Administrative Officer to the Director of the National Museum, and began to develop a changing exhibition program for the galleries of the Arts and Industries Building. As the Director of what was intended to become the Smithsonian Exhibition Hall, he began booking traveling exhibitions from museums and traveling exhibition services. That experience led him to propose a similar temporary exhibition program for the former Federal Court of Claims building, designed in 1859 by architect James Renwick as the Corcoran Gallery of Art that had been transferred to the Smithsonian. In 1968, Lloyd Herman developed a proposal for the “Renwick Design Centre” as a changing exhibition program for such exhibitions from various sources, to be administered as a component of the Exposition Hall programs. In 1970, he was hired to implement it as Administrator, Renwick Gallery. He developed temporary exhibitions that would reflect the range that the Renwick Gallery planned to embrace: architecture and design, contemporary and traditional craft, traditional decorative arts, plus ethnic and folk art from various countries. He subsequently became the first Director of the Renwick Gallery, and from 1972 to 1986 presented over 100 exhibitions. Lloyd Herman retired from the Smithsonian Institution in 1986.

Museum Planning

In 1988, Lloyd Herman began the directorship of the Cartright Gallery, a non-profit craft gallery in Vancouver, B.C., and planned its future as the Canadian Craft Museum. Working there for three years, he developed a space-use plan and an exhibition program.

At the same time, he curated traveling shows for the Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham, WA.  They included Into the Woods: Washington Wood Artists, Clearly Art: Pilchuck's Glass Legacy, and Trashformations: Recycled Materials in Contemporary American Art and Design, among others.

In 1993 he was hired by Oregon State University to plan a new museum on the Oregon Coast as part of the Thundering Seas Institute, a craft school component of the university's art department. Though advanced architectural planning and land acquisition at Agate Beach in Newport, OR, proceeded, the facility was never built.

He joined the planning staff for the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington in 1998 as Acting Senior Curator, writing collection and exhibition policies, and advising on space planning for the facility prior to its construction.

Independent Curator, Lecturer and Writer

Lloyd Herman continued to curate exhibitions on craft and design topics for the United States Information Agency, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and various other museums and traveling exhibition services. He has lectured on American crafts throughout the United States, and in Australia, Canada, England, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Japan, and has juried numerous art and craft competitions across the United States and abroad. In recent years he has led craft tours to Bhutan, India (five times), Iran, Jordan, Morocco, and Vietnam, and lectured regularly on contemporary glass art for Elderhostel/Road Scholar programs in Seattle.

Lloyd Herman’s book, Art That Works: The Decorative Arts of the Eighties, Crafted in America, was published in 1990 by the University of Washington Press, distributor of his Trashformations; Clearly Art: Pilchuck's Glass Legacy; Tales and Traditions: Storytelling in Twentieth Century American Craft and American Glass: Masters of the Art publications. He co-authored the book, Thomas Mann, Metal Artist. Recent writing projects include books on glass artists Narcissus Quagliata and Josh Simpson.

Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, photo courtesy of Fidget TV.