Meet museum director Georganne Bingham

When the Art Museum of Western Virginia, now the Taubman Museum of Art, hired Georganne Bingham from the North Carolina Museum of Art in 2003, one North Carolina colleague bemoaned the loss of "the best ambassador this museum ever had."

Bingham quickly became an ambassador for Roanoke's new museum project instead, giving a nearly nonstop series of presentations to civic groups and gatherings around the valley.

The sunny-side-up director gave a jolt to a project that had been moving slowly and ushered it toward opening day. And she did so while undergoing two hip replacements and enduring a period of almost constant pain.

"No matter what the doomsday was, there she was with her smile and her blond hair," recalled Jenny Taubman, who led the museum's capital gifts campaign and is, with husband Nick Taubman, the largest contributor to the museum.

A native of North Carolina, Bingham was brought here to succeed former Director Judy Larson, who left to take a job at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She had a reputation as a crackerjack fundraiser, which the Roanoke project needed.

"I have never, ever been more excited in my life," said Bingham when she was introduced here at a museum reception in August 2003. "I cannot wait to begin this journey."

In addition to raising money, Bingham has worked hard to get local artists behind the project, and to present programs and exhibits that will keep people coming back to the new museum.