Winterthur names new CEO to replace David Roselle

Mount Vernon Vice President Carol B. Cadou will return to Delaware this spring as the new director of Winterthur Museum, Gardens and Library.

Cadou is a 1996 graduate of the University of Delaware - Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, which focuses on the conservation of antiques. She lived in the First State for two years while in school.

"No other institution can really claim to have such a pre-eminent collection of American arts from early settlers to the nation's founders and up until the industrial age," Cadou said Tuesday from Alexandria, Virginia. "From a pure collections point, it is thrilling to think of all the stories that Winterthur can tell through its collection.

"And it's just remarkable that Henry Francis du Pont had the vision to present those collections within a coterie of rooms with historical architecture that are nestled in this very thoughtfully planned naturalistic landscape."

She will succeed David P. Roselle, who announced last year that he will retire June 1 after 10 years as executive director, the longest term of any Winterthur chief executive. Cadou's first official day hasn't yet been decided.

Cadou will be the first Charles F. Montgomery Director and CEO of Winterthur, an endowed position.

H.F. du Pont, who was born and died at Winterthur, his Greenville country estate, had a degree in horticulture. But he was known as a transformative dairy cow breeder when he went to visit a friend in Vermont in 1923 and was struck by the beauty of a simple antique American china cabinet.

Du Pont became a champion of American design and eventually amassed a collection of 89,000 objects, furniture, textiles, paintings, ceramics — and that Vermont china cabinet. He opened Winterthur as a public museum in 1951. His renown as an authority led First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to ask him to head her renovation of the White House in 1961. Du Pont died in 1969. 

"The opportunity to tell those stories, and work with a team to tease those stories out of an incredibly rich collection is just the opportunity of a lifetime, truly," Cadou said. She has a bachelor of arts degree from Wellesley College and will earn a master of business administration from Ohio University College of Business in 2019.

She steps into Winterthur as it has reached landmark levels of national and international visibility. Its record-smashing 2014 "Costumes of Downton Abbey" exhibit compared the real du Pont family life and estate to the fictional Crawley one.

The estate also is winding up a $50 million capital campaign it exceeded 18 months ahead of schedule, has spent $30 million taking care of deferred maintenance projects at the 1,000-acre property, including upgrading fire protection and security, replacing the visitor center's roof and replacing 400 windows and 400 pairs of shutters in the 175-room house.

Roselle, 78, who was also president of the University of Delaware for 17 years, plans to retire to spend more time with his family, including wife, Louise, and his grandchildren. He also plans to put a dent in his stack of books and continue to participate in several boards.

"I had the honor to lead two of the most important organizations in the state of Delaware, and I’m eternally grateful for the people who were instrumental in helping me reach that point," Roselle said.

He has spent some time with Cadou in recent weeks and said she will face the same tensions most CEOs do.

"There's a lot of really bright people, really bright people, and all of those people would like to do more and would do more if the dumb old administration could get them the wherewithal to take them on," Roselle said. "I think in all these kind of jobs, the obligation is to help people succeed, and so you try to get the money they need, the equipment they need, the students they need, all of those things, and that will continue, I'm sure."

Cadou has spent 18 years at Mount Vernon, which was George Washington's home and is a popular stop for D.C. sightseers. As with many historical sites, that estate has dramatically been added to and changed its estate amenities and tours in recent decades.

Cadou focused on preservation and collections goals to help secure long-term physical and financial sustainability of Washington’s historic architecture, collections, gardens, landscape and rare breeds.

One instant connection between Mount Vernon and Winterthur is the du Pont family's love of Washington. Winterthur contains several portraits of him. 

Winterthur's collection of objects from Colonial days through the Industrial Revolution allows for stories to be told not just of the elite, but also of the middle and lower classes, Cadou says.

"It has a story to tell about the women who were behind the scenes and rarely at the forefront," she said. The collection also can tell stories about farmers, tradesmen, servants and slaves, she said.

"I think those stories are incredibly relevant today as we think about what America means and what those ideals are and how they are expressed in material culture," Cadou says. "We have the opportunity to help Americans see the country's history through objects and to have dialogues about what those objects meant when they were made ... and what some of those stories mean to us today."

Cadou said Winterthur, like other cultural institutions, will face the challenge of engaging a population leashed to the Internet.

Cultural institutions must use digital platforms creatively, whether it is social media or a website to reach digital natives, she said.

"What we need to do is grasp the interest in digital information and invite people to come and explore Winterthur. And they might explore Winterthur in different ways, and that's OK because different demographics have different ways of learning," Cadou said.

"At each step, we are encouraging today's millennials and young people to return to cultural institutions to continue their learning at a different stage in their lives."

Contact Betsy Price at (302) 324-2884 or beprice@delawareonline.com.

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