A Change
The Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop announces Ryan Paxton as its New Director, a letter from Bill Brown
On March 1st, Ryan Paxton will become the new Director of the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop. He has managed our design and production shop for 4 years. He is an artist, artisan and educator. He is active in the New Haven Arts community. He knows the treasures and idiosyncrasies of our site. Most important, he has mentored a cohort of apprentices through the full cycle of their learning here. Ryan is superbly qualified for the job.
In September 2019, we began planning thinking a year should be enough to manage this transition. The Museum’s momentum was healthy. The economy was good. What could go wrong? When all that could go wrong went wrong, Sally and I offered another year to navigate the storm. The search for a successor bridged all that. The Committee poured through 200 applications, looked carefully at 24 candidates with wide ranging experience and interviewed ten capable finalists. Ryan’s commitment and experience prevailed.
I met Robert Solow when he was visiting the Museum twenty years ago. He was about the age I am now. He was wandering about trying to figure out what we were doing. We talked for a while by the Munson painting that depicts the site as it was in the last years of Whitney’s life. I mentioned that the painting had often been used in history books to represent the birth of the American Industrial Revolution. He smiled skeptically and asked: did it earn that reputation? I responded that it’s a beautiful picture and that people would like to think that factories could be beautiful. He returned to his question. I admitted that the story was oversimplified in Whitney’s favor.
As we talked, intermittently Apprentices would come up, make eye contact, apologize, and ask a question about tolerances or tooling. (They get impatient when I am distracted.) Professor Solow listened to their questions. Finally, he smiled and said: My advice – don’t worry about the credit Whitney gets. What you are doing gets it right. This is how change happens.
Years later, I learned that Robert Solow was a legendary teacher and economist at MIT. He won a Nobel Prize for his work on technology and the incremental evolution of productivity. (In his analysis: individual inventors – not so important.)
I share this memory because it applies to this moment. Sally and I are proud of the Museum’s growth over the past 30 years. The work has been a joy. But we are not the creators of the place; it was created by its fortuitous resources: energetic and curious students, gifted and original educators, loyal and ingenious Apprentices, generous and wise friends and supporters. Sally and I have been, at best, constructive catalysts. The Museum will continue to thrive because it has been built to change and adapt. Ryan will succeed because he has the skill and wisdom to trust the people and resources that are here.
This succession has been a deliberate process. Sally and I will work through September. Sally suggests it will take me that long to clean my desk and shop: a measure of the people and things there are to say goodbye to. This is not a farewell note. We will find an occasion in the Fall to celebrate the years we have shared.
Signed
Bill Brown
Images below by Chris Brunson from pre-pandemic visits.
