Cantor Arts Center director Tom Seligman announced in December his plans to retire at the end of 2011.

Donald Kennedy, University president at the time, recruited Seligman in 1991 to head efforts to rebuild and reinvent the campus museum into today’s Cantor Arts Center. The museum had been badly damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and was closed for years before reopening in 1999.

Seligman “was recruited to head a museum that, at best, had a virtual existence,” said President Gerhard Casper at the inaugural event for the Cantor Arts Center in 1999. “Without Tom’s faith, optimism, organizational talent, attention to detail, steadiness, calm and childlike innocence — or what he pretends to be his innocence — we would not be able to give this king without a kingdom a realm that he will now rule with the same forbearance and awareness of revenue constraints that have characterized the last seven years.”

A search committee to find a replacement for Seligman will form in early 2011. Seligman will remain involved as a senior consulting curator, continuing to organize the “Upcoming Nigeria” exhibit and an Indian jewelry project slated to open in 2013.

— Ellen Huet