• Alex Rich, executive director and chief curator of the Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art in Lakeland, Florida, is leaving his position after eight years.
• Rich has accepted the role of president and CEO of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina.
• Rich will remain in his current role through June to oversee the opening of a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition.

Alex Rich, perhaps Polk County’s most recognized ambassador for visual art, is stepping out of the local picture.

Rich, executive director and chief curator of the Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art in Lakeland, plans to leave after eight years in the role. Rich, also an art professor at Florida Southern College for 11 years, has accepted the position of president and CEO of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina.

Rich, 43, will continue in his current role through June to oversee the installation and opening of the long-planned “Frank Lloyd Wright and the College of Tomorrow” exhibition, Florida Southern said in a news release.

“It’s not a decision that we made lightly, by any means, but it’s an extraordinary opportunity for me professionally and for our family personally,” Rich said.

Rich said he could have imagined staying in Lakeland for “many, many years to come,” but he found the opportunity with the Gibbes Museum of Art impossible to refuse.

“Everything about this job matches what I want to do in my life, but also my deepest passion beyond how I care about my own family is my love of museums,” he said. “And that unbridled love for allowing people and helping people to see the world through the lens of art and artists and better understand our own worlds is what drives me professionally.”

The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston’s only institution for visual arts, arose from the Carolina Art Association, established in 1858. The museum occupies a Beaux Arts-style building that opened in 1905 on Meeting Street in Charleston’s historic district.

Rich became the leader of what was then the Polk Museum of Art in 2017 when Florida Southern affiliated with the institution. More recently, he directed the museum’s first major expansion since the opening of its current building in 1988, the construction of the 14,000-square-foot Dr. Anne B. Kerr Wing. The expansion added seven galleries and tripled the museum’s exhibition space.

“I’m proud of how we really have been able to transform the museum to the point where it is recognized and respected, not merely locally or regionally, but also nationally and internationally,” Rich said. “And I feel reassured in my leaving in the coming weeks with the fact that the museum is in a really good and really strong place, and it’s established itself as one of the great academic museums anywhere in the country.”

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Rich, a New York City native, served a high school apprenticeship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and interned at both the Met and the Whitney Museum as a college student. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and art history from Dartmouth College and master’s and doctoral degrees in art history from The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Even after taking leadership of what is now the AGB Museum of Art, Rich served as chair of the Department of Art History and Museum Studies at Florida Southern and as associate professor of art history, holding the George and Dorothy Forsythe Endowed Chair in Art History and Museum Studies.

“During his years at Florida Southern College, we have seen Dr. Rich grow as both a scholar and a leader,” Florida Southern President Jeremy Martin said in the news release. “He began as an assistant professor, earned tenure, and served as department chair before taking on the dual role of chief curator and executive director of the AGB Museum of Art. His impact has been meaningful — both on campus and in the broader community.”

Rich recently completed his final run as director of Mayfaire-by-the-Lake, the annual art show held May 10-11 along Lake Morton in Lakeland.

Fresh off the expansion of the AGB Museum, Rich will head to Charleston just as the Gibbes Museum prepares for its largest addition. The museum will spread into an adjacent historic building, boosting its capacity by 8,000 square feet.

The Gibbes Museum does not produce an outdoor art festival comparable to Mayfaire-by-the-Lake, but it hosts Art Charleston each April, a multi-day event that includes workshops, lectures and tours.  

In a change from his current role, Rich will not have an academic position in Charleston.

“So, while I’ll have no formal teaching role as the Gibbes is a non-academic museum, as I have said and I will say to everyone, you can never take the professor out of a professor,” Rich said. “I will always be a professor of art history. I’ll always want to work with students. I’ll always want to work with the public in any educational and teaching capacity I can find, or that I can talk about art through the lens of being a professor.”

Rich said he hopes to forge collaborations between the Gibbes Museum of Art and the AGB, including potential loans of works. He said he would welcome the chance to return to Lakeland on occasion and deliver a guest lecture at the AGB.

Gary White can be reached at [email protected] or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.