Vikan

Sweet sounds in any language On a visit last summer to Dresden, Germany, we stopped to listen to a quartet under an archway leading toward the Schloss. A small child seemed captivated by the music of Mozart and even danced a little jig. Gary Vikan Baltimore

If museum director Gary Vikan had any inkling of the surprise in store for him at this year's annual dinner for the Walters Art Museum board of trustees, he certainly didn't show it. The festive event, held recently in the marbled sculpture gallery of the Walters' elegant 1904 building, seemed to be drawing to a close when Vikan approached the podium to deliver a few remarks and introduce board president Bill Paternotte after desert was served. "This year we've decided to add a little twist," Paternotte began.

In response to cuts in public funding and shifting viewer habits, the Walters Art Museum will no longer be open on Tuesdays, a move that shortens its regular week from six to five days, museum administrators said. It will also change its evening hours. Beginning next week, the museum will be open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Its evening hours will be 5:30 to 10 on the second Friday of each month. (The museum will no longer remain open in the evenings on the first Thursday of each month.

Museum officials and others alarmed over the fate of thousands of irreplaceable artworks looted from Iraq's national museum in Baghdad say the only hope for recovering the country's cultural patrimony may be by appealing to Iraqi national pride and by offering amnesty and small cash rewards to looters who return stolen objects. The idea of a no-questions-asked return policy, similar to city gun buy-back programs, was raised earlier this week by the New York-based American Council for Cultural Policy, said Walters Art Museum director Gary Vikan, a member of the group.

The thing that bothers national cultural leaders Martin Sullivan and Gary Vikan most about the looting in Iraq is how little art seems to matter, at least to U.S. military commanders. "That's probably the worst thing," said Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum. The pair - along with Richard S. Lanier, director of a New York foundation, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, that deals with relations between the United States and Eastern Europe - resigned Monday from the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property in protest.

Kate Sellers Markert, the former director of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn. -- whose abrupt resignation last year triggered weeks of turmoil on its board of trustees, including six more resignations -- will return to the Walters Art Museum as associate director for external affairs and operations. Markert, 50, will oversee the Walters' finance, development and marketing departments. In addition, she will carry out a strategic analysis of the board's operations. She was given a two-year contract.

At their best, museum exhibits tell stories. Yesterday, the dozens of new pieces and features unveiled to about 5,000 visitors at the remodeled Walters Art Museum told not only of ancient civilizations, but of the museum itself and its effort to attract new legions of Baltimoreans. Touch-screen computers, new audio tours, a room (modeled after a 16th-century knights' hall) where teen-agers quietly played checkers -- all are intended to make the Walters more accessible and less museum-ish.

At the Walters Art Museum, a curator is installing an exhibit of ancient maps, workmen are giving the last few swipes of their dust cloths to banisters, a designer is fiddling with the lighting inside a Plexiglas case of gold jewelry. In just hours, the museum will reopen to the public after three years of renovations, and there's still much to be done. But even as they oversee the finishing touches for the remodeled galleries, the museum's director and its board of trustees are planning larger changes in the 67-year-old institution's home and the scope of its mission.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - The iconic moment arrived when Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum, pulled out a priceless Malevich painting lying all too casually on its side in a metal rack in the basement of the State Russian Museum. Several trustees from the Walters watched in wonder at yet another startling moment in their journey of discovery. They had flown 4,000 miles from Maryland to prepare themselves for two ambitious exhibitions the Walters is planning, one in 2003 devoted to the Russian avant-garde, the other in 2004 to icons.

There's a saying that is as true for museum directors as for poker players: You gotta know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. Refusing to fold has paid off - this time - for Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum, the only institution in the United States to hold a major exhibit of still lifes by Edouard Manet. The show, which includes some 58 works by the French artist, made its debut at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris before traveling to Baltimore. Since it opened on Jan. 28 at the Walters, it has attracted about 20,000 visitors and received enough media attention to gladden the heart of any museum administrator.