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Matthew Teitelbaum’s gambit: a smarter, sexier MFA

Matthew Teitelbaum looked over a contemporary glasswork installation by Josiah McElheny.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

Matthew Teitelbaum will tell you that he is no showman.

The director of the Museum of Fine Arts will vow that he does not think in radical terms. He’ll insist that he shuns the bold, eschews the dramatic, abjures the ostentatious.

He will tell you all this while munching a sandwich, which, as if to prove the point, he eats in his office.

Fine. But how then does Teitelbaum explain the newly installed Monet gallery, a preposterously gorgeous space that radiates with the collective glow of some 20 freshly hung works by the French Impressionist?

“I realized we could do an experiment,” Teitelbaum said. “I’m interested to see whether we could do a permanent collection installation that functions like an exhibition. Could we actually create a room from our collection that becomes a destination?”

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Teitelbaum’s gambit is that every gallery in the museum should tell a story: “Can I do something to encourage people to look?”

Now approaching his one-year anniversary, Teitelbaum, 60, has a vision that differs sharply from his predecessor, Malcolm Rogers.

He has largely avoided the spotlight, quietly working to rethink and reinstall the museum’s galleries, experiment with more adventurous contemporary programming, and craft a strategic plan for the future. His hope is that these initiatives — some visible, others in the works — will deliver an MFA that is smarter, sexier, and more kaleidoscopic.

“We don’t have to paint the front of the MFA pink,” he said. “What I hope is that in three years time we have a conversation where you say, ‘Things seem different here, but nothing seemed that radical at the time.’ I don’t think in radical terms. I don’t think about the earthquake or the forcing function that is bold and dramatic.”

Teitelbaum’s plans are part of a broader response to the steep cultural and institutional challenges facing the MFA in the years ahead, as he endeavors to manage the museum’s sizable debt, enhance its contemporary arts holdings, and appeal to a broader, younger, and more ethnically diverse audience.

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“We have to grow,” Teitelbaum said during a series of wide-ranging conversations. “The question is how you do that.”

One bright spot has been museum attendance, which in the years following the museum’s 2010 expansion has consistently surpassed 1 million visitors annually. (Last year the MFA hosted a record 1.23 million people.) Nevertheless, the MFA, like many of its peer institutions, faces deep demographic challenges in the years to come.

“We have to diversify our revenue, and we have to diversify our audience — the two are connected,” said Teitelbaum. “What we have to do is have everybody’s experience become a little more rewarding, a little more intense, and a little more memorable by virtue of what they do when they’re here. That idea is very big for me.”

He added that it’s critical for these new audiences to feel welcome at the museum, and for the MFA experience to speak to them in ways they appreciate.

“When you walk through the galleries, whose voice do you hear?” he asked. “How do you make sure people know there are many voices — not just the institutional voice — but many voices where you see yourself reflected back?”

To that end, Teitelbaum said he is looking at everything from how the museum presents its permanent collection and mounts temporary exhibits to its hours of operation, ticket prices, and café menu to make people feel more welcome.

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A visitor looked at a sculpture in the MFA’s newly reinstalled Charlotte F. and Irving Rabb Gallery.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

The stakes could not be higher. A 2008 report by the Center for the Future of Museums found that while the US population was 34 percent minority (a figure expected to grow to 46 percent by 2034), minorities represented only 9 percent of the core museum-going population across the country.

In Boston, roughly 53 percent of city dwellers identify as ethnic minorities. But only 11 percent of MFA visitors identify as nonwhite, according to MFA data. Meanwhile, an estimated 75 percent of all MFA visitors are age 45 or older.

“Teitelbaum fully recognizes that the city has changed and that bringing in a broader demographic is essential to the museum’s future,” said Ted Landsmark, a Boston Redevelopment Authority board member and honorary trustee at the MFA.

Landsmark added, however, that the museum will have a hard time appealing to broader audiences as long as its board of directors — largely populated by older, non-Hispanic whites — remains unchanged. “The board really needs to understand and represent the demographic of a museum’s future,” he said.

The museum’s finances pose their own considerable challenges. The MFA has a long-term debt estimated at $135 million, linked in part to expansion costs, with an interest payment of roughly $4.5 million last fiscal year.

That same year, the MFA’s endowment lost more than $25 million, declining from $624 million to $597 million as the museum drew on the endowment “to run the business,” according to a museum spokeswoman, and experienced a negative 0.5 percent return, underperforming the market.

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The decline prompted board treasurer Kevin T. Callaghan to worry that “challenging markets” would make it difficult for the museum to reach its ambitious, long-term goal of nearly 8.5 percent returns in the near term.

Teitelbaum said the question for the museum was whether to try to retire the debt quickly or fund it over a longer time.

“Whatever debt we carry [must] not become crippling to the future of the institution,” he said. “I would rather I could look at the landscape and say this is all about building, but it’s not. This is clawing back to a certain level at which we can build.”

Although Teitelbaum lacks some of the clubbish bonhomie of his predecessor, he warms quickly to many subjects, often leavening his responses with a gentle humor. He’s also extremely careful, forever fencing-off his thoughts with qualifying phrases and disclaimers.

There is, he says, no “magic answer” when it comes to the twin issues of the MFA’s financial health and audience growth.

But plainly part of his answer is for the MFA to begin collecting more contemporary, high-profile works by diverse artists. Singling out the museum’s recent acquisition of a Frida Kahlo painting, Teitelbaum said such works — important in their own right — are essential “so people can see in this museum cultural expression that relates to their experience.”

That will take money and new patrons, of course, meaning Teitelbaum must cultivate lasting bonds with modern and contemporary collectors.

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“We have a very engaging argument to engage contemporary collectors: We are an institution of the world,” he said. “What does it mean for contemporary art to be seen in a museum with some of the greatest artworks ever made?”

To make that case, the MFA needs a robust contemporary art program, said Teitelbaum, adding that instead of merely showing artists whose work has been canonized, the museum should be involved in debates over contemporary art.

“We have to be taking more risks,” said Teitelbaum, who described the museum’s previous efforts in the contemporary vein as “episodic.” “We have to be putting up more propositions.”

One such proposition came with the ongoing “Megacities Asia” show, a sprawling sculptural exhibition exploring issues of urban growth that curators expanded into galleries throughout the museum in part at Teitelbaum’s request.

Describing an installation of shiny plastic dishes assembled in vaulting columns, cocurator Al Miner said the work’s placement in one of the museum’s grandest spaces influenced its meaning.

“You can collapse the space of value between something rich and something poor,” Miner said. “This feels like a new direction.”

Teitelbaum said he also wants the MFA to move quickly, as it did with an upcoming show of work by the contemporary artist Frances Stark — a midcareer survey of Stark’s work that he saw recently at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

With just months to mount the show, which is set to open in September, the MFA did not have space in its temporary exhibition galleries, opting to display it in spaces normally reserved for its permanent collection.

The other big lever Teitelbaum has at his disposal is the museum’s permanent collection, which he’s encouraged curators to prune and rethink as they’ve reinstalled some of the galleries.

“Maybe we have a bit too much on view,” he allowed — a distinct departure from the approach of former director Rogers, who once quipped, “Display is the best form of storage.”

He’s also been encouraging curators to work across disciplines. By way of example, Teitelbaum points to a temporary first-floor installation titled “What’s a Body? Five Ideas.”

Centered on a sleek, cast bronze sculpture by the late American artist Louise Bourgeois, the installation matches the artist’s unabashedly minimalist totem with four sculptures from across the MFA’s collection, including figures from Cote d’Ivoire, ancient Egypt, and modern Europe.

Pedestals make the sculptures all the same height, noted Teitelbaum. “I say bring it on. . . . The European work is not higher than the African work. . . . We have to be thoughtful about all those real and symbolic ways in which we communicate.”

The spare, group-curated installation presents the works in a new light. And curators say it’s indicative of a broader shift at the MFA.

“The museum in general is entering into a new moment of interdepartmental conversations,” said Erica Hirshler, senior curator of American paintings. “There’s an interest in exploring ideas from different perspectives. I find that energizing.”

Still, “What’s a Body” is not universally loved inside the museum. One curator who asked not to be identified said that kind of bare-bones thematic installation doesn’t take full advantage of the MFA’s collection.

“It’s an encyclopedic collection, and that’s something he hasn’t yet worked with,” said the curator, noting that Teitelbaum came from a previous post as director of the Art Gallery of Ontario. “We can do things that he could never have dreamt of doing before, but right now we’re still doing things that he could have done in Toronto.’’

If “What’s a Body” is temporary, the second-floor Monet gallery feels more permanent. Showcasing the depth of the MFA’s holdings, it offers a sweeping account of the French Impressionist’s career, moving from his plein air works of the 1870s to his interest in Japanese art and later water-lily paintings.

Accompanied by Katie Hanson, an assistant curator of paintings who organized the gallery, Teitelbaum paused briefly upon entering the room as if to take in its halcyon glimmer. Turning to Hanson, he asked: “Did I say anything other than put Monet in this room?”

“Put Monet in this room, that’s all you said,” Hanson replied with a laugh. “And not too much.”

Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, flanked by senior curator Ronni Baer and Teitelbaum, viewed “Class Distinctions: Dutch Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer” at the museum last fall.Natasha Moustache/Getty Images/File

Malcolm Gay can be reached at malcolm.gay@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @malcolmgay.