Q&A with Walker director-to-be Olga Viso, part two

Continued from yesterday afternoon, this is part two of MAN's chat with outgoing Hirshhorn director Olga Viso. She starts as director of the Walker Art Center in January, 2008. Today: Viso's thoughts on Washington and the state of the museum scene here.

MAN: I'm becoming a little concerned about contemporary art in Washington, DC and the next few questions will probably reflect that. If the top rank of contemporary art museums are MoMA, SFMOMA, Walker, MOCA (even though they don't have collection space), and maybe the Whitney and the Guggenheim when they want to be, going forward what stands between the Hirshhorn and that tier?

Olga Viso: I don't think anything, I think we stand right there. We're always mentioned in the top five.

MAN: Well, I don't mean programmatically, I mean in totality. The Hirshhorn doesn't have a $190 million endowment, for example. Your curatorial staff is smaller.

Viso: I think that's one of the really impressive things about the Hirshhorn actually, that the institutions that are considered our peer institutions are in many cases double the staff and double the budget we are, and we have a lean-and-mean staff that produce these very exceptional programs to the best that we can.

That's a point I have made, certainly to the Smithsonian Institution and to our board is that the reputation we have is pretty exceptional considering we are smaller in terms of budget and staff size and in endowment... We have an acquisitions endowment that is comparable or even better [than some of those institutions], but we don't have a program endowment the way they do. Of course we do have a federal allocation, which is different. I think it's important to understand too that the Hirshhorn is really fortunate to have the federal allocation because it does support base operations, and it does pay for almost all of the staff, and it does keep the museum open. Everything that distinguishes the Hirshhorn in terms of its collection and its free public exhibitions is supported by private funds, not the federal allocation. The Hirshhorn is not fully funded, it's very much a public-private partnership as all the SI museums are.

MAN: You're about to be DC's most recent ex-director - and the most prominent. When I look around the DC museo-cultural landscape I see the two marquee modern/contemporary museums without a director, I see a Smithsonian report that has said that another SI art museum's leadership is a "weakness" and is "ineffective," I see a vacant contemporary curator job at a museum with scant interest in art of the last 30 years (the NGA), and one other museum that may not have a contemporary curator going forward. This is either a bad moment here or there are structural issues that need to be addressed. Which?

Viso: I don't see it as a moment of crisis. I see it as a moment of opportunity. I think it's a process of finding the right staff and it's a moment when there are a number of vacancies in museum positions around the country. It isn't specific to Washington. It's a generational shift as you have curators switching to directorships.

I think one of the challenges that DC faces and I'd say any modern or contemporary institution faces in terms of its garnering support is that DC doesn't have a history -- and certainly the Hirshhorn doesn't have a history of -- consistent or ongoing philanthropy from the corporate sector. That's always very challenging for contemporary museums because the artists you present aren't familiar names and the programs are riskier and more challenging. Although the NGA does well with that they have more established names and a more encyclopedic program. I think it just has to do with the kind of city DC is.

And in DC, where you have a lot of national museums that have boards that have members from across the country, it's just a different dynamic so funding challegnes are pronounced across the board. Also, more broadly across the country, corporations are funding differently now. They're not doing as many straight sponsorships as they are marketing initiatives and marketing-based support, so that's changed across the board.

In DC, because a lot of the museums are national I think you have a wider constituency of support, but they may not be as deeply invested in the institution from the heart. That communal pride is more challenging for the national museums. One of the things we started at the Hirshhorn that I hope continues is reaching out to the local community. The Hirshhorn has a really large percentage of the audience that's local. Thirty-eight percent of the Hirshhorn's audience is from the DC metro area, where as at Air & Space or Natural History it's 10-12 percent.

MAN: People are wondering if the problems at the Castle have anything to do with your departure. Has the Institution's leadership issues made it a difficult time to be a SI museum director?

Viso: It really has nothing to do with my decision. I had an opportunity that was very, very hard for me to turn down. I have always had, and the Hirshhorn has always had, very strong support from the Smithsonian administration and even through all of the last few months the SI could not have been more supportive than it has been in encouraging us to take the direction we've taken.

While it's disappointing that there's been such focus on this in an ongoing way, it's just disappointing to have to be inundated with all the negativity in the media. It really... we have proceeded with ever more vigor to do the great programs that we do. I think the Hirshhorn has been fortunate throughout all this to get consistently great coverage for its programs and for what the Hirshhorn is and does in the community. The Hirshhorn has been able to proceed business-as-usual throughout this.