A Museum Adminstrator Learns What It's Like to Be CEO

By Jeffrey Klineman

Davenport, Iowa

Cyclone country might not be the ideal place for a person to try her first building project, given the way structures sometimes get picked up and torn apart. But for Linda A. Downs, the location is not as key as the opportunity.

In September, after 13 years as the education director at the National Gallery of Art, Ms. Downs, 57, left Washington to become director of Iowa's Davenport Museum of Art and its soon-to-be constructed