DALLAS—After resigning his nine-year directorship of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Jeremy Strick did not have to wait long for the next opportunity. In late January — about a month after the 53-year-old departed as part of MOCA’s agreement with collector Eli Broad, who extended $30 million to keep the troubled museum afloat — the Nasher Sculpture Center, in Dallas, announced Strick’s appointment as director.

Strick, who says he began talking with the Nasher about the job in early 2008, took up his post on March 2, nearly two years after his predecessor, Steven Nash, left. Does the young, medium-specific institution miles from L.A. — and miles from MOCA’s much-publicized financial woes — feel like a welcome clean slate? "It is a new start, but with some old friends," he says. "I’ve known the collection for a long time." The first exhibition he worked on when he was as an assistant curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1987, was a show of the Rodins, Giacomettis and Hepworths that the late Raymond and Patsy Nasher had amassed over 50 years. In 2003 the couple founded the Renzo Piano-designed center to house their holdings.

Now Strick’s first order of business is to reinstall the permanent collection (around 300 pieces) and then develop an acquisitions program. Since Raymond Nasher died, in 2007, "the center has not acquired new work, and it’s very much its mandate to build the collection," explains Strick. That could mean expanding the focus from classical pieces to installations, sculptors’ drawings and even photographs. "A Fresh Start" originally appeared in the May 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2009 Table of Contents.