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This was a banner year for Anne Litle Poulet. After three decades in the curatorial trenches, mostly at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, she launched a landmark traveling exhibition and landed a prestigious new job.
The exhibition, "Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment" -- featuring an 18th century French artist's iconic images of American and European leaders -- opened in May at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Three months later, Poulet, 61, was appointed director of the Frick Collection in New York. Succeeding Samuel Sachs II, who stepped down after running the Frick for six years, she took charge in October.
The first woman to lead the venerable institution founded by industrialist Henry Clay Frick, Poulet oversees a collection that spans the Renaissance through the 19th century and a research library. Installed in Frick's 1913-14 Manhattan mansion, the collection includes paintings by Ingres, Goya, Turner, Van Dyck, Vermeer and Whistler; 18th century French furniture, Italian Renaissance bronzes and Limoges enamels.
But 2004 looms even larger for Poulet. As the "Houdon" tour continues at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles through Jan. 25 and winds up at the French national museum in Versailles in the spring, she will settle into her new position.
"One of the things that is so nice about going to work at the Frick is that it has a superb curatorial staff," Poulet said on a recent trip to the Getty. "I'll be involved in selecting exhibitions and making acquisitions, but I'll have so much else to do, and I'm looking forward to that."
Beyond that, she wasn't ready to comment.
But...