Raiding Talent: Out of the BAM and into the KAC

Khanna and Herbert: rising stars. Photograph by Andrew Waits for City Arts.

Exactly one year ago, Eileen Herbert and Aarti Khanna were interns at Bellevue Arts Museum. Herbert was earning her MFA by helping BAM education curator Patrick McMahon invent the initiative Creative Response: Art for Teens, aka CRAFT, and program Bellevue Artsfair, the giant cash cow that helps keep BAM afloat. The Sothebys-educated Khanna was Artsfair’s volunteer coordinator.

This month, both begin work at Kirkland Arts Center. Herbert will serve as education director and Khanna as special events and volunteer manager. “Both are making significantly more at KAC in permanent positions than in temporary positions and internships at BAM,” says KAC’s executive director, Christopher Shainin. “At least twice as much.” Both are in positions that are crucial to the future of the institution. KAC’s budget is only $650,000, versus BAM’s $3.3 million, and if Herbert and Khanna can’t deliver profitable programs, KAC will suffer. “Eileen will oversee two thousand students in the education program, youth and adults, and Aarti manages about three hundred active volunteers,” says Shainin. Only 40 percent of KAC’s budget comes from grants; 60 percent is hard-earned revenue from classes and special events. “Eileen is responsible for about 90 percent of that.” 

Much of the rest comes from Khanna’s special events, most conspicuously the October 8 REDUX fundraising art auction at Meydenbauer Center. “We’ll have installations made out of refrigerator boxes set up like a maze, and a Museum of Miniature Art with work by local artists, and Bruce Hemingway from the UW computer science department has designed miniature robot art critics, Regina Sprocket and Jen Gears,” explains Shainin. Those robots will “be videotaping, so you’ll see what they see, projected on the wall.”

BAM isn’t bitter about the duo’s defection. “We’re super excited they both found fantastic jobs,” says BAM PR czar Tanja Baumann. And in fact, BAM and KAC are collaborators as much as rivals for audiences, funds and employees. Herbert will moonlight at BAM. “I will continue to work with McMahon on family day in October – we plan a Día de Los Muertos theme,” she says. 

“We’ve been looking at doing more with BAM,” says Shainin, “figuring out how to collaborate in ways beneficial to the Eastside.” When the 2012 National Conference of Ceramic Art is held in Seattle, BAM and KAC will coordinate exhibitions.

Not that Shainin will promise to stop raiding talent from BAM. “I’d like to hire Stefano [Catalani] too,” says Shainin of the bowtie-wearing BAM director, “but I had nothing to offer him but free Wi-Fi and bow tie pasta.” •