Eric McCauley Lee, former director of OU’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, assumed directorship of Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum on March 23. Lee has a doctorate in art history from Yale University and served as the director of the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati since January 2007.

During his nearly decade-long tenure at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum, Lee was a key figure in the acquisition of the Weitzenhoffer Bequest, a collection of 33 French Impressionist paintings which included works from Monet, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, in 2000. He also headed the museum’s 2005 expansion. The 34,000 square foot Lester Wing was designed by Hugh Newell Jacobson, who was a student of Louis Kahn, the architect who designed the Kimbell. According to Lee, the Jones is a physical “descendent” of the Kimbell.

“The Kimbell has been a dream job of mine since I was in graduate school,” Lee said. “I love the architecture of Louis Kahn. The Kimbell is arguably Kahn’s greatest building – I think it’s certainly his greatest museum building.”

The Kimbell’s permanent collection is small, Lee said, but the quality of its artwork is exemplary. The collection consists of fewer than 350 pieces, but includes works by Picasso, Monet, El Greco and Rembrandt.

“Every work in the collection is of major significance,” he said. “The combination [of the Kimbell’s architecture and exhibitions] … is just magical.”

Lee is the Kimbell’s fourth director. He will succeed Timothy Potts, who left the museum in 2007 for a directorial position at the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambrige in England.