During 26 years as a museum director, most recently at the Dallas Museum of Art, Jack Lane, left, has shown great skill at rallying influential collectors to build what he once called the “heart and soul of a museum”: its permanent collection. In his new job, as president and CEO of the New Art Trust, a foundation established by the influential San Francisco collectors Pamela and Richard Kramlich, the 64-year-old Lane will make fractional donations to three museums: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where he was once the director, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Tate, in London.

The trust, says Lane, is “one of the great media-arts collections in the world,” holding major multimedia installations by such renowned artists as Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, Doug Aitken, Diana Thater and Matthew Barney. It also strives to educate museum professionals worldwide in the issues that are peculiar to media arts, such as conservation and presentation.

Lane says that unlike more traditional art forms, such as painting, the media arts and the technology that supports them are in constant flux. In his post with the New Art Trust, he hopes to give the Kramlichs “good advice on how to maximize the cultural impact of what they have been collecting.” Lane will be based in Sun Valley, Idaho, where he grew up, so that in addition to sustaining his lifelong passion for state-of-the-art philanthropy, he can spend time, as he puts it, "perfecting my ski turns.”

"Trusty President" originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's December 2008 Table of Contents.