Schnitzer’s new director talks museum career, lessons from a famous stolen painting

For Olivia Miller, the new executive director of the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the new job isn’t that new: She used to intern there. 

Miller graduated from UO with a master’s degree in art history in 2009. She later became the first woman appointed director of the University of Arizona’s campus museum, where she oversaw the return and restoration of a famous stolen painting. 

Miller, 43, is originally from Fort Worth, Texas, where one of her earliest memories is putting her hand in the water of the fountain at the Kimbell Art Museum. Her mother made it a point to bring her three daughters to art museums. Then came a childhood move to Tucson, where Miller grew up and attended the University of Arizona with plans to be a public school art teacher.

An art history class changed those plans. A group trip to Spain with a medieval art history professor helped clarify them; she worked to catalog sculptural fragments from a medieval church in León, and did four field seasons of archaeological excavations.

Working with actual objects appealed to Miller. But she first came to Eugene thinking she would stay in the classroom. “Even outside of those experiences, I came here to graduate school thinking that I would be an art history professor,” she said. “And then I had my internship here.”

At the Schnitzer museum, she cataloged Japanese netsuke miniature sculptures as a collections intern and co-curated a small exhibition of screen prints by the British artist John Piper with her intern cohort. Working with objects directly, outside of a classroom and without the regular rigor of academic research and writing, was fulfilling.

Now, after COVID-19’s impact on student learning styles and the state of people’s attention spans, she said the campus art museum is even more important when it comes to engaging students in a different way. 

“The academic museum can help remind people to slow down,” she said. “To get them to look at things very closely, to think really critically and just to see something new that they’ve never seen before.”

A dramatic episode in Tucson

A few years after graduating from UO, Miller moved back to Tucson and started working at the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 2012 as the curator of education. In 2023, she became the first woman to be appointed as director of the museum after serving as interim. 

But the most dramatic episode unfolded in 2022. A painting stolen from the museum in 1985, “Woman-Ochre” by Willem de Kooning, resurfaced. An antiques store owner bought a collection of items from a New Mexico estate sale that included the stolen painting, which was returned. But it was in poor condition, and the Getty Conservation Institute repaired the canvas.

For Miller, one of the lasting lessons of that time is how museums need to be comfortable speaking out about things like thefts, even though it could be embarrassing. 

“Us being comfortable talking about it is exactly the reason why the painting came back, because we did publicize it in 2015 for the 30th anniversary of the theft,” she said. “We told the story honestly and openly. Had the press not been interested in the story, had we not spoken about the story, the people in New Mexico would not have found the painting, and it probably would have fallen back into private hands again and gone missing for another 30 years.”

The entire experience, she said, is something she still can’t believe happened under her care. “It’s something that I’ll never get over,” she added.

Returning to UO

After more than a decade at one museum, she said she began to feel restless. But the list of places she was willing to leave Tucson for — where she had a job she enjoyed, family in the area and a desert landscape she loved to hike — was a short one. When former Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Executive Director John Weber stepped down, however, a light bulb went on.

“I always knew that they were ahead of the curve on a lot of things, and were really a model for other academic museums,” she said. “At the same time, I loved Eugene. I did a lot of hiking when I lived here, I could visualize myself being back here.”

Her first day of work was Sept. 15, the same day the UO Board of Trustees started outlining the impacts of a $29 million reduction in the university budget. Miller said she accepted the Schnitzer position knowing that the university had a deficit. She said she doesn’t fully know what the impact of cuts on the museum could be. But she said if there is a cut, it’s one that the museum could withstand without losing any staff.

She said she doesn’t have any specific plans as she settles into the job beyond better understanding the museum, its collections and Eugene as a whole.

“This collection has grown so much since I’ve been here,” she said. “That’s one of the things I’m most excited about with the job, is just being able to learn so much.”