Results tagged “Association of Art Museum Directors” from Real Clear Arts

I was not surprised to read today's Modern Arts Notes post about Michael Conforti's refusal to discuss single-collector shows with AJ co-blogger Tyler Green. Conforti is, of course, the director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute as well as the current president of the Association of Art Museum Directors. He is a thoughtful, scholarly man. We often agree, I think.

But last summer, when I was at the Clark to review its Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence show for the Wall Street Journal (mentioned here), I talked with Conforti about the same subject. It isn't hard to see that single-collector shows are becoming more common, and I asked Conforti whether he thought AAMD needed to set some rules. To my surprise, he didn't think it was an issue. At all.

Let's face it: single-collector shows are going to continue, especially if money continues to be tight. Some are good, even very good. But they are unquestionably subject to abuse. Collectors can dangle the prospect of donations to a museum, essentially pressing it to go all out on an exhibition that includes works that wouldn't ordinarily be shown. Or to take a particular point of view. They can play museums off against one another, as each vies for the promise of the works. They can use exhibits to drive up prices of their works, quickly selling after the works come down from the walls. Or not so quickly. And so on. This is not hypothetical -- privately, directors and curators admit these things happen.

For whatever reason, I dropped the issue and did not ask the Association of Art Museum Curators for its opinion -- but I'm glad Green is.

Rules won't be easy to define, but they're needed.

Photo: Courtesy The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

The Association of Art Museum Directors has taked a stance -- not a surprising one, but nevertheless a timely one. This afternoon, President Michael Conforti, also director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, has sent a letter to Gov. Ed Rendell (right) of Pennsylvania opposing the state's proposed tax on admissions, memberships and programs at museums and other non-profits.

The key words:

...this tax is nothing short of a tax on education.  Museums, along with other cultural institutions, provide unparalleled educational opportunities for the young people of Pennsylvania, families supporting their children's learning, adults seeking spiritual and psychological nourishment, and everyone looking for affordable and uplifting leisure activities at a time of economic challenge.  Levying a tax on participation in educational programs and experiences will only discourage the public from taking advantage of Pennsylvania's wide range of cultural resources.

Moreover, the proposed expansion of the sales tax will erode the substantial positive economic impact of your state's cultural institutions: non-profit organizations in Pennsylvania generate $1.99 billion in economic activity each year.

AAMD copied various legislative leaders, including Dominic Pileggi, Jake Corman, Jay Costa, Jr., Dwight Evans, Todd A. Eachus, Keith R. McCall, Samuel H. Smith, Lawrence M. Farnese Jr., and Frank Oliver.

Let's hope it helps, and perhaps it will stir readers who live in Pennsylvania to weigh in, too.  

Several days ago, AJ blogger Greg Sandow weighed in (here) on the recent Chorus America study, which purported to show that people who sing in choruses are better citizens than   those who don't sing in a group (nothing about singing in the shower...). To recap, here was the main point, taken from the press release:

An estimated 32.5 million adults regularly sing in choruses today, up from 23.5 million estimated in 2003....That's good news because singing in one of the 270,000 choruses in the U.S., such as a community chorus or a school or church choir, is strongly correlated with qualities that are associated with success throughout life...Greater civic involvement, discipline, and teamwork are just a few of the attributes fostered by singing with a choral ensemble.

Greg, rightly, picked the piece apart -- which made me glad, because I was almost suckered into writing an article on the study. Then I actually read it, and realized that I'd pretty much been wasting my time.

If only Chorus America were the only offender on this score (and btw I am not suggesting any maliciousness on its part). Unfortunately it's hardly alone among arts organizations. I've already written here about the useless statistics collected by the Association of Art Museum Directors, imploring them to collect better information. (They told me they're working on it...then said nothing was decided on the subject.)

Another example occurred in opera recently -- though it was not the fault of opera companies. Rather, an Italian medical professor published a study in Circulation: The Journal of the American Heart Association supposedly showing that listening to dramatic music, like opera, influenced the human cardiovascular system predictably and therefore had application in the treatment of heart disease and stroke.

Sounded great for opera, didn't it? 

It looks as if the Brandeis University-Rose Art Museum brouhaha is turning some museum associations into, for this field, activists. A group task force is circulating a petition with the theme "Great Universities Have Great Museums," closely following the NEA's slogan, "A Great Nation Deserves Great Art."

When Brandeis announced in January that it intended to close the Rose Art Museum, a few critics complained that neither the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries nor the Association of Art Museum Directors moved quickly enough. Still, when ACUMG did protest, its statement deplored the university's move "in the most unequivocal terms." Branding the Brandeis decision a "dismal example" to other colleges and universities, David Alan Robertson, ACUMG's president (left), told The New York Times, "One fears that this opens a floodgate." (Robertson is also director of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern.)

Now ACUMG, AAMD, the College Art Association, the American Association of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Curators, the University Museums and Collections group of the International Council of Museums, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation are seeking like-minded academics in an effort to make sure that floodgate stays closed.

The task force is asking university professors, presidents, provosts, and deans to sign an online petition. One email urges, "Pass the link on to all colleagues you know who care about academic museums and wish to support them during these challenging times."

The key paragraph:

At the heart of many of our great colleges and universities stand museums of art, science, archaeology, anthropology, and history, as well as arboreta and other collections of living specimens. Along with our libraries and archives, these academic museums advance learning through teaching and research. They are the nation's keepers of its history, culture and knowledge. They are essential to the academic experience and to the entire educational enterprise.

The task force plans to publicize the petition in a full-page ad in The Chronicle of Higher Education this fall, along with "selected signatures."

In the meantime, you can read the entire petition here, and you can see who has signed at www.acumg.org/webelieve. When I checked late on the evening of 7/28, there were pages and pages of signatures, some from museum directors and independent scholars as well as academics.

Ordinary folk can offer support at Save The Rose Art Museum.

Photo Credits: Courtesy Northwestern University and Save the Rose 

Your faithful reporter can not follow up on the summer meeting of the Association of Art Museum Directors, which I wrote about here several days ago. The agenda, we knew, included plans to talk about a new strategic plan, the economy, the need for better statistics, deaccessioning, and other things. I made a few suggestions for topics needing discussion, and so did some commenters.

Janet Landay, AAMD's executive director, spoke with me before the meeting, and I told her that I'd check back afterwards. Today, I tried -- but she declined to talk. Her response to my email, trying to set up a good time, mentioned a "fairly detailed" press release posted on the website and included the comment that "there were no concrete results." In a second email, specifically asking about a statistics effort, so we all can learn where museums stand more quickly, she confirmed that "we continue those discussions but there've been no decisions."

Well, I asked, should I check then with Michael Conforti, AAMD's current president, from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute? "Neither Michael nor I are going to have anything to say about the meeting beyond what's in the press release."

You can read the press release here. The only thing we know now that we did not know before is who spoke to the group. On the economy, a panel included Donald Marron, former head of Paine Webber and MoMA trustee, Glenn Lowry, MoMA director, and Mimi Gates, former director of the Seattle Art Museum. Johnnetta Cole, recently appointed head of the National Museum of African Art, spoke about diversity.

Museum directors have no obligation to talk to me or anyone else about internal matters, but I'm still disappointed -- about their lack of openness and especially about the lack of those "concrete results."  

Members of the Association of Art Museum Directors head to Toronto this weekend for the group's semiannual meeting, Sunday through Wednesday. While they're there, directors will be visiting not only the Art Gallery of Ontario -- which last year opened its new Frank Gehry-designed space (at right) -- but also the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the new Burchfield Penney Art Center in nearby Buffalo.

On the agenda: the start of a new strategic plan for AAMD. Matthew Teitelbaum, director of the AGO, chairs the committee. They'll also be talking about the economy and other undisclosed museum issues. (Survival, probably.)

The AAMD exists for the good of its members and not the press, of course, but sometimes our interests overlap. So, when I spoke the other day with Janet Landay (below), AAMD's new executive director, I made a plea for more and better statistics. The AAMD surveys its 190 members each year in a State of North America's Art Museum report -- but the numbers it discloses are fairly useless. For example, if you read the report on 2008, you will discover that 20% of respondents increased their acquisitions in 2008 while 15 percent decreased them, and 63% had no change. Is that by number? Value? By what percent did they go up or down? It doesn't say. Ditto for other questions. Here's a link to the last report, on 2008, released on April 30 - you'll see what I mean.

Wouldn't it be useful for the public to know how museums in general and their hometown museum in particular is doing in this climate?

When I brought this up with Landry, she agreed that the numbers "are useless" and said "we need to fix a lot of that. It's on our agenda of things we are going to do." We both need better and more frequent numbers. In March, I noted here that the Theatre Communications Group had started doing "Snapshot Surveys" of its members, some 460 theatres in 47 states, on fiscal matters. They aren't perfect, but they are much more useful than AAMD's statistics. Maybe TCG will share how it does it.

What else should be on AAMD's agenda?  

Yesterday Maxwell Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Art Museum, sent me a link to an interview he did with Richard Armstrong, the new(-ish) director of the Guggenheim Museum. It's quite a revelation -- on the nature of Biennials, an overcultured New York, his audience and collecting plans and, most of all, about deaccessioning.

In the beginning -- the video, which was posted on ArtBabble yesterday, runs for 49 minutes and 28 seconds -- Max (left) simply lets Armstrong (right) talk, telling how the Guggenheim got to where it is today. But around the 40th minute, Max asks about deaccessioning. Armstrong replies:

"The collection needs to be shaped. It's slightly misshapen....One wonders, does one need to own 114 Kandinskys, for example."

Max, surprised, offers "we're interested in Kandinskys," and Armstrong plows ahead: "I just think there's a way of deploying assets slightly differently."