Q&A with Kathy Halbreich, part two

Yesterday's part one of MAN's two-part Q&A with outgoing Walker director Kathy Halbreich is here. And Geoff Edgers has an eight-question exchange with Halbreich here.

MAN: How is the job of museum director different now from when you started?

Kathy Halbreich: I think the job inevitably gets more and more complex. And for me one of the things I wanted to see was if it was possible to change the audience and whom we serve. I think one of the real changes during the time I've been here had to do with the increasing centrality of audience. When I first came here and was looking at the mission statements of sister institutions I was shocked. I found lots of commentary about objects but very few mentions about audience. Once you make the audience central to your preoccupation it changes everything. It changes how you think about your programs, your staff, your board, whom you do business with, the language you use, the programs you do. I think what makes the Walker special is this ability to hold artists and audience close to our collective heart.

And the Walker's audience has changed during your tenure?

Oh yeah, definitely. We built this amazing program for teens that started about the first or second year I was here. We developed a seminar that involved public television, the parks department, an organization that dealt with gangs, and I can't remember whom else but we met for a day a week for months to collectively study what teens thought about, were up to, the challenges in their lives, etc. While I was somewhat Pollyanna-ish in hoping that we would all move together simultaneously, I think that's where the Walker's Teen Arts Council came from, and I think that the programs that we've developed and the way in which that program is organized has become a template for many other institutions here and abroad and I think that's fantastic.

I guess that came out of my own experience as an adolescent... and from a very wise man who was the provost of MIT at the time I was there who said to me, 'Why can't you make something that helps young people acquire ideas rather than choose the right sneakers?' That really stuck with me. When I came to Walker I was able to actually try to put that into practice. I think about 14 percent of our audience now are young people who come [on their own and] not in school groups. That's because of our Teen Art Council of 12-14 kids. They have their own budget, they have a staff, they recruit their own successors and they tell us what's important to them -- and I think you can also see it in the numbers of people of color who come to this institution. That's a group we didn't even count before I came here.

How has the latest rise of the contemporary art market changed contemporary art museums? Or has it?

Being around 16 years you do get to see the cyclical nature of the market. I remember in the '80's thinking that something is really wrong when you have to think about buying pictures through transparencies. And I think something was really wrong. I suppose for an institution like Walker which positions itself as being often but not always or exclusively ahead of the market, that has become sometimes more difficult. But it only is more difficult if you only look at New York City and London as the market. There are still enormous continents of art history that I still think are less visible than they one day will be visible. And that's where the research imperative is so crucial to cultural institutions and so misunderstood sometimes.

You know I think there are of course more private museums coming up. I'm not sure how that's going to change the art world yet. Walker, after all, started as one. But I think the civic nature of public institutions is really key to our mission. And I'm not sure that's the case for single-person-created institutions.

Is there anything in the contemporary art museum model that is broken, that needs to be fixed?

My advice to any institution would be: Endow yourself well. It's the most important thing you can do in buying yourself artistic freedom.

I basically think and this is something that Glenn Lowry and I had a lunchtime conversation about some time ago: We're all undercapitalized. It's easy to see that -- it's just difficult to figure out the multiple strategies to get yourself out of that position.

One of the things we're finding that's really fascinating is that our attend is moving disproportionately toward the free days. For us that's Thursday nights and the first Saturday of every month. There's a story in there. I will leave that for the next director to solve.

Admissions is a big deal in contemporary institutions, however I do think there's no reason why people who can pay shouldn't pay. I think what you have to provide is a gracious way for people who can't pay to engage with the institution.