Tonight, Wagner's still occupying her chair in the large office she's called home since last year's massive construction project that resulted in DVAC's Meadows Foundation-funded new digs at Swiss Avenue and Texas Street. It's late, but she's got to finish two grant applications to the Texas Commission on the Arts before she can call it a night. She ran out at 5:15 p.m. to pick up her 14-year-old son, Alex, from football practice. She sat in the car, drumming her fingers, watching the dashboard clock, as Alex's coach kept the squad late, till 6:15 p.m. She drove to a pay phone to call her husband, Pete, because one of the kids had misplaced her cell phone and because their other child, 10-year-old Katie, had to be picked up as well, and Wagner was afraid she wouldn't make it. Pete couldn't get loose, so Wagner tackled Alex and raced to get Katie. The family rendezvoused at home, where Wagner's Italian heritage kicked in. She turned leftover pork into savory ravioli for dinner before returning to her office to work.
Days like this--and a terminal case of the "family needs me" flu--caused the death of Katherine Wagner, DVAC executive director, as we know her. It wasn't a hint of scandal or impropriety or marginal work performance or power politics that brought Wagner to her decision to leave her job. "For me, the hard thing was trying to be an excellent, wonderful mother and an excellent, wonderful director," the 47-year-old says. "There were times I just felt like I was compromising both. Does every working mom feel this way? You bet," she says. "I call it the modern woman's malady." Wagner's juggling days will end next month, when she'll stop bringing home the bacon, content only to fry it up in a pan. She'll be what she calls the "chief operating officer of the Wagner Family Inc." full time for the first time in her life. A job change for her husband has given the family a luxury it could never previously afford, Wagner says, and she wants to try being a stay-at-home mom before the kids are grown and gone. "It's really important to me to be in art, to work with artists. I'm best at supporting other people," she says, promising to return to DVAC as a volunteer. When she goes home for good she'll take the same skill set--nurturing, promoting, enriching, smoothing over, making ends meet--that served her and the visual artists of Texas well. "I want to be with my children," she says. "But I love this job, even as I'm giving it up."
Tonight, Wagner's working at the computer on her retro, 1960s-era massive wooden desk, beneath a stunning Heidi Strunk shrine-like art assemblage, with drawers of Melissa Miller's and James Surls' drawings at her elbow in the dark, deserted art center. Her train of thought is interrupted by the occasional call from Katie--"When will you be home, Mom?"--but other than that, she relishes the quiet, which allows her to concentrate. "This grant money will fund our exhibitions for 2002," she says, her planning calendar open to the distant future and a monumental juried show of the work by a recently coalesced group called "Texas Clay Artists." In her last couple of weeks at DVAC, she'll rally the troops of artist-volunteers, led by Bizarro cartoonist Dan Piraro and his painter-graphic designer wife, Katherine Baronet, to kick off DVAC's annual Thanksgiving fund-raising campaign. "We do this every year," Wagner says, "to help us pay for the operations of this building. Light bulbs, electric bills, toilet paper, everything." Wagner is feeling good about the recently completed Legend Awards, the largest single fund-raising and recognition project for DVAC, held each September to honor an artist, a patron/collector, and an arts professional. This high-profile program, which this year raised $40,000 of the art center's annual $250,000 operating budget, has become a signature event; like so many others--the Mosaics Series of exhibitions highlighting an artist's ethnicity in his or her work, the Critics Choice show, and the "Business of Art" seminars to help artists market their talents--it was started under Wagner's watch. She oversees grant writing, programming, education, fund raising, membership, and administration, and she's an active consultant to the talented guest curators who mount show after impressive show in the art center's galleries.
DVAC board president, local art collector, and stay-at-home mom Laura Boeckman was the first to hear of Wagner's decision. "When she told me, it was typical Katherine," Boeckman says. "Very straightforward. Part of my heart sank, and part of it was so happy for her. If she hadn't brought us to such a good point, had we been in some sort of turmoil or in the middle of a move, I think I would have said, 'You cannot do this.'" But Boeckman, who defines DVAC's Wagner-described "harmonious" board, accepted the task of leading a search committee to find a new director. The board opened the first round of résumés November 17, and Boeckman says it may consider an interim director in order to take enough time to find a suitable replacement. "The next candidate is not going to be a Katherine," Boeckman says realistically. "But we want him or her to have most of her qualities. Primarily, we're going to make sure that the next director truly cares about the artists in the same way she has."
Local art star, painter, and SMU professor Bill Komodore says Wagner's sincere stance on art advocacy personifies DVAC's mission. "Artists are second-rate citizens here, but DVAC is unique in its support for us," he says. "They consistently pay attention and recognize that there is excellent art being made here. They are one of the last places to pay attention to Texas artists. We're a vanishing breed, you know." White Rock Lake Artists Tour chairman and sculptor Becky Johnson has close ties to DVAC both as an independent artist and in her work with art organizations, including the Texas Visual Art Society. "Katherine is unique in that she really believes artists are special and they need to feel special and be developed," Johnson says. She points to one of Wagner's latest concepts to encourage local artists to work together for a stronger art community. "She organized the Affinity Groups so we can meet each other, get together every month for discussions and support for our art openings," Johnson says. "That's pure Katherine. She truly believes that if we build friendships we build a stronger art community, and she's made DVAC the catalyst."
Wagner's last hurrah at DVAC is a testament to her artist relationships. The recently opened Member's Exhibition boasts an unprecedented 410 pieces of art this year. "It's amazing work," she says of the volunteer-curated open show, "by some of the top names in Texas art." The exhibition checklist proves she's right: Karl Umlauf, Roberto Munguia, Mary Hood, Derrick White, David Hickman, Earline Green. But equally impressive are the hundreds of the unsung and unknown whose work crowds every inch of space in the 15,000-square-foot center. And for this show, as in every DVAC show, artists receive 100 percent of the sale price of their art--another DVAC hallmark unprecedented in galleries or art centers. "I know I'll miss it," Wagner says, pushing herself back from the desk that dwarfs her petite silhouette. "It would be 100 percent a gift, this job, if the kids were already in college. But that's not where I am right now, and they've got to come first."
