Microsoft art curator is packing his bags

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

By REGINA HACKETT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER ART CRITIC

Michael Klein is leaving Microsoft, where he has served as art curator for five years. Contrary to rumor, he was not fired.

"It's ridiculous," said Dan Bross, Klein's Microsoft boss. "Microsoft is fortunate to have had some of Michael's background and vision heading the art program. His knowledge of art is solid, and his enthusiasm for it is infectious."

Klein has accepted a job as director of the International Sculpture Center in New Jersey. Bross said Klein told him that he's planning to move the center to Manhattan.

Klein's last day at Microsoft is Nov. 19. During his tenure, he added more than 1,500 art works to the collection, placing them not only at Microsoft's ever-expanding Redmond headquarters but also at Microsoft buildings in California's Silicon Valley.

At Microsoft, he has favored painting and photography, especially still lifes, abstractions, landscapes and figure studies with their clothes on. By nature a contrarian, he collects at the edges of the mainstream and celebrates the underdog, which doesn't mean he passes on central figures if he has the right opportunity to acquire their work.

An enormous red abstraction by Sol Le Witt titled "1,000" hangs in one of Microsoft's cafeterias, spanning an entire wall and transforming a drab space into a vibrant, cosmopolitan hub.

Klein also instituted a series of art lecture programs for the staff and public. (For information, check www.microsoft.com/mscorp/artcollection.)

One of the things he has valued the most in the past five years, he said, is becoming familiar with the work of Northwest artists who are underappreciated on the national and international level.

"I'll continue to be an advocate for them at the Sculpture Center," he said.

Bross said Klein will be involved in selecting his replacement. "I'm interested in hearing his ideas," Bross said.

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