Biography
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap. (Kurt Vonnegut)
Tommy believes that his role is to serve people and community through art. He does so as the Director of the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama. He takes delight in new and creative visual experiences and recognizes few boundaries or limitation for artists or for communities. Tommy entered the Winterthur in the Early 90's a life-long collector committed to a connoisseurship oriented art historian’s path. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, to a factory manager and an artist/antiques dealer Tommy grew up and attended schools (and visited museums) in Alabama, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Delaware and North Carolina. He can specifically remember the day he walked outside with eyeglasses and first experienced visual beauty. His life has been primarily driven by his love of sharing the breadth and variety of visual experience from the time he was a child collector/dealer until he became an adult turned curator/arts administrator.
Tommy entered the University of South Carolina Honors College a philosophy major. When told there would be a graduate seminar concerning Southern Folk Pottery the next fall, he changed his major, enrolled in a battery of art history courses and began a fellowship transcribing taped interviews with traditional southern potters at the McKissick Museum. A summer of graduate work through UNC Greensboro in association with MESDA was complimented by a tour of the country and it's art museums while driving a truck full of colonial antiques up to the Henry Ford Museum, across to La Jolla, CA and back via antique shows in Denver and Memphis.
After two years of graduate work at Winterthur Tommy married Beth Ann Spyrison, then Curator of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum in Old Wethersfield, CT. Two years of intermittent work completing his thesis and wandering museums, auctions and byroads of New England ended when Beth Ann convinced Tommy to accept a part-time curatorial position at the Ipswich Historical Society working at the Heard House with the Arthur Wesley Dow collection and archives. He still believes she played an unfair trump card. Already becoming bored with the life of a traveling student/peddler, Beth Ann knew Tommy had tremendous respect for Arthur Wesley Dow and his role as a prime influence in the development of arts education and the arts and crafts movement in America.
In Ipswich, Tommy worked with volunteers to catalog the Dow and historic collections and in order to raise money for archival supplies he took an Arthur Wesley Dow exhibit and lecture to the Grove Park Inn Arts and Crafts Conference in Asheville, North Carolina. Conference participants provided funding for the needed archival supplies and also invited him to become Director/CEO of The Stickley Museum “Craftsman Farms Foundation.” Seven and a half years of growth and a Save America’s Treasures funded restoration projects later Tommy returned to the south as the Director of The Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama.
In Mobile, Tommy has worked with the a strong board, committed local government and arts oriented community to devise a strategic plan to reduce capital debt, secure reaccreditation from the American Association of Museums, increase operating budgets, refine education programs, develop community outreach and restructure staff, collections and exhibition priorities based upon community research, visitor assessment and audience feedback. Less than two years into the plan many of the primary goals are nearing completion while major revisions to the fundraising program and a new strategic plan are both evolving.
Tommy is a graduate of University of South Carolina, earning his B.A. through the South Carolina Honors College in the History of Art. He earned a M.A. in Early American Culture and Decorative Arts from University of Delaware - Winterthur. Tommy resides in Mobile, Alabama and is married to Beth Ann McPherson, a former curator at The Mark Twain House in Hartford, Ct, The Webb-Deane Stevens Museum in Old Weathersfield, CT, and at the Stickley Museum in New Jersey. Together they share responsibilities for Tommy Arthur McPherson, IV, who is two and a half years old and they are expecting a second son in October. In his spare time Tommy enjoys collecting pottery and books, playing pool, internet gaming and travel (especially to Scotland). Tommy's current interests include contemporary art, particularly when it intersects technology, international ceramics and southeastern art.
Tommy is passionately committed to the idea that museums serve their community and should be measured by their demonstrated values and performance. He is an avid reader and a member of the American Ceramics Circle, Rotary International and numerous professional organizations. For work supporting recovery at the Ohr/Okeefe museum and elsewhere in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina he was designated a “Preservation Hero” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He plans to tease