Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

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SUBJECT: MUSEUMS & GALLERIES (90%); TALKS & MEETINGS (90%); FUNDRAISING (89%); ART & ARTISTS (89%); CULTURE DEPARTMENTS (78%); EXHIBITIONS (78%); PAINTING (78%); DESTINATIONS & ATTRACTIONS (78%); CHILDREN (77%); HISTORIC DISTRICTS & STRUCTURES (77%); BUDGET (72%); BUILDING RENOVATION (67%)
GEOGRAPHIC: HARTFORD, CT, USA (73%) CONNECTICUT, USA (90%) UNITED STATES (90%)
LOAD-DATE: May 25, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: BUSY: Peter C. Sutton, above, in his office at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn., preparing for a meeting. Right, top: Mary Sue Sweeney Price, right, director of the Newark Museum, discussing preparations for an exhibition with Christa Clarke, a curator. Middle: Terrie Sultan, right, director of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, with her assistant, Carol Powel Smith. Bottom: Michael Botwinick, the director of the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, called some of the job's business responsibilities ''pretty boring stuff, but incredibly important.'' (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ALEX DI SUVERO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

MAXINE HICKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

SUSAN FARLEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. LI6)

IN CHARGE: Terrie Sultan, director of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, and Peter C. Sutton, below, the director of the Bruce Museum. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAXINE HICKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

SUSAN FARLEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. LI1)

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The New York Times
May 25, 2008 Sunday

Correction Appended

Late Edition - Final
Resistance Is Futile
BYLINE: By SETH SCHIESEL
SECTION: Section AR; Column 0; Arts and Leisure Desk; VIDEO GAMES; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1907 words
IT'S O.K. to liken Shigeru Miyamoto to Walt Disney.

When Disney died in 1966, Mr. Miyamoto was a 14-year-old schoolteacher's son living near Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital. An aspiring cartoonist, he adored the classic Disney characters. When he wasn't drawing, he made his own toys, carving wooden puppets with his grandfathers' tools or devising a car race from a spare motor, string and tin cans.

Even as he has become the world's most famous and influential video-game designer -- the father of Donkey Kong, Mario, Zelda and, most recently, the Wii -- Mr. Miyamoto still approaches his work like a humble craftsman, not as the celebrity he is to gamers around the world.

Perched on the end of a chair in a hotel suite a few dozen stories above Midtown Manhattan, the preternaturally cherubic 55-year-old Mr. Miyamoto radiated the contentment of someone who has always wanted to make fun. And he has. As the creative mastermind at Nintendo for almost three decades, Mr. Miyamoto has unleashed mass entertainment with a global breadth, cultural endurance and financial success unsurpassed since Disney's fabled career.

In the West, chances are that Mr. Miyamoto would have started his own company a long time ago. He could have made billions and established himself as a staple of entertainment celebrity. Instead, despite being royalty at Nintendo and a cult figure, he almost comes across as just another salaryman (though a particularly creative and happy one) with a wife and two school-age children at home near Kyoto. He is not tabloid fodder, and he seems to maintain a relatively nondescript lifestyle.

''What's important is that the people that I work with are also recognized and that it's the Nintendo brand that goes forward and continues to become strong and popular,'' he said by way of comparing Walt Disney's role in the larger brand with his. ''And if people are going to consider the Nintendo brand as being on the same level as the Disney brand, that's very flattering and makes me happy to hear,'' he added, through an interpreter. (He understands spoken English well but does not speak it beyond a few phrases, a twist of considerable amusement to him given that his father taught English.)

Mario, the mustached Italian plumber he created almost 30 years ago, has become by some measures the planet's most recognized fictional character, rivaled only by Mickey Mouse. As the creator of the Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda series (which have collectively sold more than 350 million copies) and the person who ultimately oversees every Nintendo game, Mr. Miyamoto may be personally responsible for the consumption of more billions of hours of human time than anyone around. In the Time 100 online poll conducted this spring, Mr. Miyamoto was voted the most influential person in the world.

But it isn't just traditional gamers who are flocking to Mr. Miyamoto's latest creation, the Wii. Eighteen months ago, just when video games were in danger of disappearing into the niche world of fetishists, Mr. Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's chief executive, practically reinvented the industry. (Mr. Miyamoto's full title is senior managing director and general manager of Nintendo's entertainment analysis and development division.) Their idea was revolutionary in its simplicity: rather than create a new generation of games that would titillate hard-core players, they developed the Wii as an easy-to-use, inexpensive diversion for families (with a particular appeal to women, an audience generally immune to the pull of traditional video games). So far the Wii has sold more than 25 million units, besting the competition from Sony and Microsoft.

In an effort to build on this success, last week Nintendo released its new Wii Fit system in North America, a device that hopes to make doing yoga in front of a television screen almost as much fun as driving, throwing, jumping or shooting in a traditional game. Though there were no hard sales figures available as of Tuesday, there were reports of stores across the country selling out of Wii Fit.

In a global media culture dominated by American faces, tastes and brands, video games are Japan's most successful cultural export. And on the strength of the Wii and the DS hand-held game system, Nintendo has become one of the most valuable companies in Japan. With a net worth of around $8 billion, Nintendo's former chairman, Hiroshi Yamauchi, is now the richest man in Japan, according to Forbes magazine. (Nintendo does not disclose Mr. Miyamoto's compensation, but it appears that he has not joined the ranks of the superrich.)

''Without Miyamoto, Nintendo would be back making playing cards,'' said Andy McNamara, editor in chief of Game Informer, the No. 1 game magazine, referring to Nintendo's original business in 1889. ''He probably inspires 99 percent of the developers out there today. You can even say there wouldn't be video games today if it wasn't for Miyamoto and Nintendo. He's the granddad of all game developers, but the funny thing is that for all of his legacy, for all of the mainstay iconic characters he's designed and created, he is still pushing the limits with things like Wii Fit.''

Mr. Miyamoto graduated from the Kanazawa College of Art in 1975 and joined Nintendo two years later as a staff artist. The original Donkey Kong was a prime force in gaming's early surge of popularity, along with arcade classics like Space Invaders, Asteroids and Pac-Man.

He rose quickly at the company, and his name has been synonymous with Nintendo since the 1980s, when the original Mario Bros. games helped save the industry after the collapse of Atari, maker of the first broadly popular home console. When Atari failed amid a slew of unpopular games, Nintendo rekindled faith in home gaming systems; the Nintendo Entertainment System, released in the West in 1985, became the best-selling console of its era.

Since then Mr. Miyamoto has been directly involved in the production of at least 70 games, including recent hits like Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Mr. Miyamoto supervises about 400 people, including contractors, almost entirely in Japan. The popular new installments in classic game franchises have maintained his credibility among core gamers even as he has reached out to new audiences with mass-market products like the Wii.

Through all his games, his designs are marked by an accumulation of care and detail. There is nothing objective about why a goofy guy in blue overalls like Mario should appeal to so many, just as there is nothing objective in how Disney could have built a company on talking animals. Rather, the reason I stood in line at a pizzeria more than 20 years ago to play Super Mario Bros., the reason Mr. Miyamoto is almost a living god in the game world, is that his games have some ineffable lure that inspires you to drop just one more quarter (or, these days, to stay on the couch just one more hour).

Just as a film is not measured by the quality of its special effects, a game is not measured merely by its graphics. This concept is lost on many designers, but not on Mr. Miyamoto. And just as a film buff might prefer to watch an old black-and-white movie instead of, say, ''Iron Man,'' even Mr. Miyamoto's earliest games hold up as worthy diversions. (The story of two men battling for the world record in Donkey Kong was made into a film, ''The King of Kong,'' last year.)

''There are very few people in the video game industry who have managed to succeed time after time at a world-class level, and Miyamoto-san is one of them,'' Graham Hopper, a Disney veteran and executive vice president and general manager of Disney Interactive Studios, said in a telephone interview. ''The level of creative success that he has achieved over a sustained period is probably unparalleled.''

Given that its roster of characters includes not only Mario and Donkey Kong but also Princess Peach, Zelda, Bowser and Link, it's easy to imagine that Mr. Miyamoto designs his games around those characters.

The truth is exactly the opposite. According to Mr. Miyamoto, gameplay systems and mechanics have always come first, while the characters are created and deployed in the service of the overall design. That means a focus on the seemingly prosaic basic elements of game design: movement, setting, goals to accomplish and obstacles to overcome.

''I feel that people like Mario and people like Link and the other characters we've created not for the characters themselves, but because the games they appear in are fun,'' he said. ''And because people enjoy playing those games first, they come to love the characters as well.''

Mr. Miyamoto's work is evolving from a reliance on invented characters and fanciful, outlandish settings like Mario's Mushroom Kingdom or Zelda's mythical Hyrule. With games like Nintendogs (inspired by his pet Shetland sheepdog), Wii Sports, Wii Fit and coming next, Wii Music, Mr. Miyamoto is gravitating toward everyday hobbies: pets, bowling, yoga, Hula-Hoop, music. It is as if an artist who had mastered the abstract had finally moved into realism.

''I would say that over the last five years or so, the types of games I create has changed somewhat,'' he said. ''Whereas before I could kind of use my own imagination to create these worlds or create these games, I would say that over the last five years I've had more of a tendency to take interests or topics in my life and try to draw the entertainment out of that.''

It has proved the perfect strategy as Nintendo reaches out to nongamers who may not care to understand why this frantic plumber keeps jumping on top of turtles, or why that gallant fellow in green has to keep rescuing the same princess over and over. At this moment, when consumers crave the ability to shape and become a part of their entertainment, whether through MySpace or ''American Idol,'' the latest star in Nintendo's stable of characters is you -- or rather Mii, the whimsical avatar Wii users create of themselves.

''I see the Miis as the most recent character creation from Nintendo,'' Mr. Miyamoto said. ''What's interesting is that regardless of the user's age, if they're looking at a Mii, it's their Mii. Before, when you're playing as another character, it's more typical of more passive entertainment, and by creating a Mii you're becoming more a part of the entertainment experience.''

Nintendo is expected to release more details about Wii Music this summer, but the basic concept is that while popular music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band allow players only to recreate canned tunes, Wii Music will try to enable users to capture the feelings of composition and improvisation.

Mr. Miyamoto grew up on Western music like the Beatles and the Lovin' Spoonful. He plays piano and banjo and, as a bluegrass aficionado, immediately recognized the name of Ricky Skaggs when told over dinner in Manhattan that Mr. Skaggs was scheduled to perform in town in a few days. Mr. Miyamoto even joked about extending his stay to catch the show. (He didn't.)

''We're trying to create an experience where people are very simply able to get the feeling like maybe they're creating music,'' he said.

With a track record like his, it would be foolish to bet against him. When it comes to the Walt Disney of the digital generation, no one knows fun better.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: COMPUTER GAMES (90%); CELEBRITIES (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (72%); CHILDREN (69%)
COMPANY: WALT DISNEY CO (84%); KINROSS GOLD CORP (58%); NINTENDO CO LTD (55%)
TICKER: MCKY (LSE) (84%); DIS (NYSE) (84%); KGC (NYSE) (58%); K (TSX) (58%); NNT (LSE) (55%); 7974 (TSE) (55%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS713110 AMUSEMENT & THEME PARKS (84%); NAICS515112 RADIO STATIONS (84%); NAICS512110 MOTION PICTURE & VIDEO PRODUCTION (84%); NAICS453220 GIFT, NOVELTY & SOUVENIR STORES (84%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (79%) JAPAN (88%); UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: May 25, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: June 1, 2008

CORRECTION: A caption with an article last Sunday about the Nintendo video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto misidentified the character from the Zelda series shown. It is Link, not Zelda.
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Shigeru Miyamoto illustrates the Wii Fit system, a new interactive physical fitness device from Nintendo. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL NAGLE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg.AR1)

Inhabitants of Nintendo's world: top, an image from Wii Fit

inset, the title character in the Zelda video game series

left, Mario Super Sluggers for Wii

below and bottom, characters and a scene from Donkey Kong. (PHOTOGRAPHS FROM NINTENDO)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The New York Times
May 25, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Balancing Art and Business
BYLINE: By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
SECTION: Section CT; Column 0; Connecticut Weekly Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1915 words
DATELINE: GREENWICH
PETER C. SUTTON looked a little weary as he presided over a senior staff meeting at the Bruce Museum here. Dr. Sutton had just returned the night before from a business trip to Japan, where he had given a lecture on Vermeer and the Delft School, his specialty, and discussed loans of artworks for future shows at the Bruce. Now he was listening as Nancy Hall-Duncan, senior curator of art, reported on plans for a 2009 show devoted to the French Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley.

Ms. Hall-Duncan's summary, which included details of loan requests and a complementary costume exhibition, was as close as Mr. Sutton would get to working with art that day. Earlier that morning he had met with a board member, then attended a governance committee meeting. Immediately after the staff briefing came another meeting, one with visiting members of the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. By 6 p.m. he had left the museum, heading to what he called a ''donor cultivation event'' at the home of a local collector.

''I am lucky if I get an hour a day dealing with art,'' Dr. Sutton said, after a quick break between meetings to countersign a batch of checks, return phone calls and answer e-mail messages. ''It sounds glamorous, but running a museum is a whole lot of administration and organization. I sit on 12 different committees, and when I am not sitting in meetings, here I am raising money from patrons and donors.''

With an annual operating budget of $4.9 million and 40 employees, the Bruce does 14 shows a year, attracting about 100,000 visitors, including 12,000 schoolchildren.

''Directors are responsible not only for overall administration,'' Dr. Sutton said, ''but also the financial stability of the institution, which means both the expenditure and revenue.''

Dr. Sutton, who was director of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford before coming to the Bruce in August 2001, is not alone in devoting a great deal of his time to administrative matters. Take Michael Botwinick, the director of the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, who spent a morning several weeks ago studying changes to the museum's insurance policies. ''It is pretty boring stuff, but incredibly important,'' he said. The same morning, Mary Sue Sweeney Price, director of the Newark Museum, had started her day attending a city-sponsored meeting on diversity in the workplace.

Mrs. Price, who has been the head of the museum for 15 years, is also a former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

''These days, to be a successful art museum director,'' she said, ''you have to get sustenance from knowing that you may not have the good fortune to be dealing with art and exhibitions all day, but that the broad range of responsibilities and duties which you are expected to perform make it possible for others on the staff to make it happen.''

As an older generation of museum directors begins to retire, there are an unprecedented number of vacancies in the field; in the last six months alone, there have been openings for directors at more than two dozen major American art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Dia Art Foundation in Manhattan; the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and the Phillips Collection in Washington.

Similarly, there are numerous current or imminent vacancies at museums outside of Manhattan. At the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz, N.Y., Neil C. Trager is retiring next month after more than 26 years. At the Princeton University Art Museum, Susan Taylor, who has been on leave since mid-January, will officially depart at the end of June. There are also vacancies at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum on the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, N.J., where Greg Perry left on Dec. 31, and at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, N.Y., which has had three directors in the last three years.

Vacancies were recently filled at two high-profile museums in the region. Terrie Sultan joined the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y., on April 1, replacing Trudy C. Kramer, who had been director for 26 years. Susan Lubowsky Talbott is taking the top job this month at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, which had been vacant for more than a year.

Salaries paid to museum directors are ''disparate,'' Mrs. Price said, depending on the candidates' skills and ''where an institution is in its life cycle.''

Generally, however, ''in nonprofits there is still a huge difference in resources available in comparison to the corporate sector,'' she said.

The changing of the guard at museums often brings with it a renewed emphasis on financial stability, particularly at successful regional museums, which rarely have the large endowments bestowed on their urban counterparts.

''The director's job description has metamorphosed over the last decade as museums have grown in size and are increasingly expected to generate their own revenue,'' Mrs. Price said. ''Obviously, in addition to traditional attributes of connoisseurship and scholarship, candidates for director jobs these days also need to have skills in management, business and other areas like marketing, new technology and, of course, resource gathering, which is more popularly known as fund-raising. And I would probably put this last one top of the list.''

During Mrs. Price's 15-year tenure, the Newark Museum's operating budget has more than tripled, growing to $18 million from $5.6 million. When she joined the museum, 85 percent of the operating budget came from city and state funding, she said. These days it is closer to 60 percent, and Mrs. Price says she spends about 40 to 50 percent of her time working directly or indirectly on fund-raising activities.

Her experience is shared by directors of other museums in the New York region.

''One way or another it just eats into your day,'' said Erik H. Neil, director of the Heckscher Museum of Art on Long Island. Last month Dr. Neil completed a $1.5 million renovation of the museum's historic building with money raised from public and private sources. ''Even if you are not at an event or asking a patron for money to support a program, you are always on the lookout for new patrons and potential supporters.'' Fund-raising and the constant pressure to get more people through the door -- audience numbers are an important measure of success, especially for government funding bodies -- are responsibilities that directors of regional museums have in common with their counterparts in major cities. But there are significant differences, clustering around issues of scale, staffing levels and community involvement.

In general, regional art museums tend to be small to medium in size, with operating budgets of $1 million to $10 million. (As a point of comparison, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has an annual operating budget of $200 million.) They survive from one year to the next on very tight margins, raising money to put on shows with little endowment to fall back on in hard times. They also tend to give priority to programming rather than people, so they are frequently understaffed. Multitasking is common, even among directors. Dr. Neil said that at one recent fund-raiser he did everything from setting up tables to giving the welcoming speech.

But the most striking difference between metropolitan and regional art museums is their relationship to their community. ''It tends to be much more organic'' in the suburban museums, Mr. Botwinick said, referring to their focus on local audience and outreach.

By contrast, tourists and casual visitors tend to form the core metropolitan museum audience.

''The people who come to a regional museum are usually from the local area and use it genuinely by choice,'' Mr. Botwinick said. ''They see it as part of the fabric of the community and often have a sense of ownership over it and certain expectations about what it provides.''

Mr. Botwinick believes this kind of relationship to a local community is the best -- and the most challenging -- aspect of running a regional art museum.

''It is about understanding what your place is, what your mission is, and being comfortable with that,'' he said. ''But it is also about understanding that this goal doesn't let you off the hook on the highest standards and scholarship. This is not some alternative, dumbed-down version of the real thing. You are part of a national conversation on matters of art and culture, and informed visitors expect the very highest standards.''

Ms. Sultan, 55, the new director of the Parrish Museum, who came from the Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, said she wants the Parrish ''to be known for strong local ties but also to have a more global outlook.''

''I want to be part of a national and global museum network,'' she said.

However, she said: ''To be successful the Parrish has to be a center for community engagement. What matters is how you define community. I'd also like to see us take a leadership role among Long Island museums.''

At the Bruce Museum, where the vast majority of visitors are from a 30-mile radius, ''we cater very much to the local community and do tailor our offerings,'' Dr. Sutton said.

''At the same time, we also try to mix things up, with shows ranging from old masters to contemporary art, with research catalogs and loans from collectors and museums,'' he said. ''It is all about striking the right balance between responsibilities to the community and maintaining a commitment to professional, quality programming.''

To meet those standards, many regional art museums have had to be entrepreneurial, partnering with other institutions to make shows happen or drawing on all the talents and connections of the staff and board. Some regional museum directors continue to curate shows, like Harry Philbrick, at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, who spent a recent day trying to organize the manufacture of 50,000 camouflage-colored tennis balls in China for an outdoor installation by Serge Spitzer. He eventually found a factory in Shanghai that could do it for him.

''As a noncollecting museum, the Aldrich is focused on exhibitions, so I probably have a bit more contact with art and artists than directors at other museums,'' Mr. Philbrick said. ''But it is true that a lot of your time is spent doing things that don't seem to have a lot to do with art.''

Despite his busy schedule, Dr. Sutton recently found the time to curate an exhibition at the Bruce devoted to old master works from the collection of Jacques Goudstikker, a Dutch-Jewish art dealer whose gallery was plundered by the Nazis. Given his expertise in Dutch and Baroque art, the show, which opened this month, was a natural fit for Dr. Sutton, who started as a curator of European art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But even for a show like the Goudstikker, which received $40,000 in a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, he said he spent more time fund-raising than anything else.

Ms. Sultan at the Parrish is determined to balance her business and art interests. ''I have a lot of energy and care very deeply about museum management,'' she said. ''But I am in this business because I love art, so I try to make sure that one part of every day at work has something to do with art. I am very directed about that.''