MANDEL CENTER FOR NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

Mitchell Kahan, Director and CEO,
Akron Art Museum
2008 Recipient of the Leadership in Nonprofit Management Award

Dr. Mitchell Kahan has been Director of the Akron Art Museum since moving to Akron in 1986. He served previously as Curator of Modern and American Art in Raleigh at The North Carolina Museum of Art and as Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Alabama. He holds a Ph.D. in Art History from City University of New York Graduate School and undergraduate and master's degrees from University of Virginia and Columbia University, where he studied architectural history and art history. His doctoral dissertation addressed philosophical aspects of American painting in the 1930s.

Over the past thirty years, Dr. Kahan has written and lectured extensively on twentieth-century American art, including the history of corporate collecting, folk art and contemporary art. He has been awarded fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Helena Rubinstein Foundation and has served on advisory panels for local, state and federal arts agencies. In 1984, he was art consultant for the Louisiana World's Fair.

He is a past president of Akron Roundtable, Akron Area Arts Alliance and Ohio's Intermuseum Conservation Association. He is the co-author of a book on the collection of the Akron Art Museum and was honored by the Ohio Museums Association with the Distinguished Museum Professional Award (2003). He is also the recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize Robert P. Bergman Award (2008).

Learn more about the Akron Art Museum.