{"id":304,"date":"2013-10-01T05:15:38","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T12:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/?p=304"},"modified":"2013-09-30T12:59:59","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T19:59:59","slug":"dinnervention-3-happiness-dinnervention-and-disruption-by-margy-waller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/2013\/10\/dinnervention-3-happiness-dinnervention-and-disruption-by-margy-waller.html","title":{"rendered":"Dinnervention 3: Happiness: Dinnervention and Disruption by Margy Waller"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Margy<\/a>

Margy Waller<\/p><\/div>\n

This is a guest post from Margy Waller, Senior Partner at the Topos Partnership and fellow Dinnerventionist. \u00a0Margy has previously guest-posted for <\/em>New Beans here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>The Invitation<\/b><\/p>\n

One of the great surprises of my year came in the form of an invitation to dinner received last spring when I awoke to an email titled in part: NOT SPAM PLEASE READ.<\/p>\n

The email and invitation to a Dinnervention came from Barry Hessenius of WESTAF (The Western States Art Federation). The dinner is his invention<\/a> and is designed to bring together an \u201cunheralded group of arts sector leaders\u2026[who] would – as guests at a dinner party – provide for a memorable and meaningfully engaging conversation on critically important arts issues; people with new ideas, who can argue convincingly for those ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barry\u2019s democratic approach to developing the invite list allowed for any of the 10,000 or so readers of his blog to nominate guests. He received over 350 names, and then he and his co-producer Shannon Daut, and an advisory group – Ian David Moss, Mitch Menchaca, Richard Evans, Nina Simon, Ron Ragin\u00a0and\u00a0Gary Steuer, chose twelve invitees.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1630\"<\/a>\u00a0\"IMG_1629\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Advance Work<\/b><\/p>\n

Accepting the invitation meant committing to a fair amount of thinking and writing. But what a sweet requirement, right? We got to nominate topics for the dinner conversation and then write our \u2018case\u2019 for addressing the issue in a short briefing paper \u2013 arguments which Barry honored us by publishing on his blog, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The twelve of us<\/a> had some interaction via conference call and emails in advance of the dinner. Not as much as I\u2019d have liked, especially in retrospect. One of the primary benefits of the Dinnervention experience was spending time with the others \u2013 including the WESTAF staff and Shannon who assisted in every way, and Margot Knight who hosted us at the incredibly lovely and sculpture filled \u2013 if remotely-located-on-a-scary-one-lane-cliff-adjacent-road \u2013 Djerassi<\/a>, a retreat for resident artists. Some of my dinner partners were already friends, some I\u2019d never met in person \u2013 but had talked to or tweeted with, and others I\u2019d never met before and simply Internet-stalked from a distance.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1592\"\u00a0Margot invited those of us who arrived in time before dinner to join her on a hike to see the sculpture and artwork on the land. The works are mostly temporary; artists are aware that the artwork will change and fade into the landscape over time. The tour was a brilliant appetizer of sorts \u2013 it made for some interesting conversation about the value of investing limited resources into \u201cart for arts sake.\u201d After all, few people ever get the chance to see the Djerassi artwork, yet it is created by artists on retreat for a month that is, by design, without any demands or artistic requirements. I will say this: it brought some of us together around questions of arts in community \u2013 ideas we\u2019d discuss in different ways for three hours over dinner later that evening.<\/p>\n

The Topic<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b>We were invited to write and talk about what many people think of as the disruption of the same old ways of presenting art, reaching new audiences, and engaging the public in a conversation about the arts as a public good. The topic<\/a>, in short, was: \u201cTraditional audiences are declining and participation patterns are shifting seismically, which is having a deleterious impact on arts organization’s traditional revenue streams. How can we address this pattern on a macro scale? What would a new movement around the arts look like?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

As the date for the Dinnervention got closer, I began to imagine a disruption of the dinner. I expected that so many super thoughtful people sitting around a table, discussing how to create a new movement in the arts, would have way more to say than time would allow. It made sense to organize the conversation with some ground rules, and our hosts did so, but I was feeling a desire to organize the participants to disrupt the plan in some way \u2013 like, whip out a crazy hat mid-meal and play some music for a serendipitous game of musical chairs. After all, we were invited to talk about art, why not interrupt dinner with a minor random act of art<\/a> or flash mob action?<\/p>\n

But, that didn\u2019t happen. Instead, the disruption came when the people around the table felt so passionately about a topic or statement that they broke the ground rules for discussion and jumped the line for talking. (Otherwise, Barry and Shannon maintained order with a list as we each discretely signaled a desire to comment.)<\/p>\n

As I think back on the dinner, those disruptions are among the moments that stand out for me.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1576\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Disruption Sticking With Me<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b>Devon Smith, in her after-dinner-blog<\/a>, summarized the events in this way:<\/p>\n

\u2026the\u00a0<\/i>Arts Dinner-vention Party<\/a>\u00a0did\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0reach consensus on how to build a\u00a0movement<\/a>\u00a0for the arts, nor how to save the (institutional) arts (organizations). We did discuss, debate, and disagree on a far range of topics: whether we want to be more like co-ops or soup kitchens, if arts orgs as community centers strays too far from our mission, how to hold arts administrators accountable, who will be our growth hackers, if death panels for the weakest (organizations) among us are really a good idea, and what our minimally viable products will be, among many others. The only thing we agreed on was that the\u00a0arts<\/em>\u00a0are not in trouble, it\u2019s the\u00a0institutions <\/em>that are failing.<\/i><\/p>\n

That\u2019s well put.<\/p>\n

One of the disagreements was also a moment of disruption.<\/p>\n

Clay and Nina had a bit of back and forth about what Devon describes as the question of whether \u201carts organizations as community centers stray too far from our mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nina, of course, leans toward \u201cigniting shared experiences and unexpected connections\u201d in the museum as a thriving, central place in her city.<\/p>\n

Clay shared some skepticism about arts organizations serving as community centers.<\/p>\n

This was apparently not the first time these two have had this conversation. By the end of dinner, Clay acknowledged that he may be coming around to Nina\u2019s view, as she explained that people are coming to the museum to co-create and otherwise engage in arts events that bring people together. Even if these visitors don\u2019t always come for the art already on the walls, community building occurs through art.<\/p>\n

The debate over focus and emphasis at our arts organizations is playing out again as I\u2019m writing this after-dinner-blog of my own. On an artsjournal.com blog post provocatively titled \u201cTrouble in Paradise: Santa Cruz\u2019s Museum Loses Its Way\u201d,<\/b><\/i> <\/b>Judith H. Dobrzynski extended thoughts she\u2019d written about earlier in the New York Times<\/a>. As I write this, there are over forty comments on the post.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to pull a short quote from Ms. Dobrzynski\u2019s writing to capture the essence of her thinking, but it seems fair to say that she\u2019s unhappy with the trends toward participatory and experiential arts, a focus on visitor engagement \u2013 and other things that involve taking the pulse of the \u201cgoers\u201d or interfere with simply \u201cstanding before the art.\u201d<\/p>\n

I added a short note<\/a>, using the Times<\/em> platform, when they published Ms. Dobrzynski<\/a>\u2019s commentary there, reacting to her point that these initiatives will change who goes to museums, and for what. (In short, exactly right and hurrah!)<\/p>\n

When she used her own blog to pursue these points via the (apparently under-researched) post of a local blogger who attacked Nina Simon and her leadership of the Santa Cruz Museum of Arts and History, I was compelled to respond more directly. It went something like this:<\/p>\n

What Do We Want?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Everything depends on our goals.<\/i><\/p>\n

Many of us want to live in a place where the arts organizations \u2013 museums especially \u2013 are of and contribute to community. Buildings that have energy and where people want to be. Places where people come together and get to know each other better, strengthening the bonds of civic infrastructure through art. (<\/i>Here\u2019s<\/a> why I say this.)<\/i><\/p>\n

Everything that I read and see about what\u2019s happening in community engagement at the museum in Santa Cruz is exciting and appealing. It\u2019s no surprise that attendance and membership are up \u2013 way up. If we want expanded and bigger audiences for our arts and artists, we should love what\u2019s happening at the Museum of Art and History there, and pay close attention to what they are learning about creating fans and people who want to return \u2013 bringing friends and family along.<\/i><\/p>\n

After watching with enthusiasm from a distance, I had the great fun of visiting the museum with Nina Simon as my guide a few weekends ago. * It was a quiet Saturday afternoon and there was plenty of opportunity for contemplation in the museum \u2013 for those what like it like that.<\/i><\/p>\n

But also, there was a great feeling of energy, and opportunities for me to share my reactions to the art \u2013 to feel that I was part of what happened and could contribute to the sense of community there. And these feelings are not unique to me. Every visitor is invited to offer a comment on the museum \u2013 right out in the open. Here are two responses I loved enough to photograph:<\/i><\/p>\n