Archives for March 2009

I can’t let today’s special section on museums in the New York Times pass without handing out raspberries, for the dumbest things that were said, and strawberries, for the smartest. Plus, something for Tom Campbell, of the Met.

Raspberries to:

Ann Philbin, director, Hammer Museum, UCLA: “We can’t just be about art anymore. 
Museums are the new community centers.”

Lori Fogarty, director, Oakland Museum: “We’re moving away from the authoritarian voice of a museum. We’re taking the approach that everyone’s perspective is valid.”

Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums: “People don’t expect the museum visit to be passive. They need more than three dry sentences of wall text.”

Strawberries to: 

Neal Benezra, director, SF MoMA: “If you cut excessively — and I think I can say this is wisdom for our current situation in our field right now — the public will lose interest in you. It’s
a very fine line, but you can create a recession of your own making if you’re too extreme in the reduction of your program.”

And Benezra again: “A really great museum that grows to maturity dedicates itself to its collection. I would ultimately like to see a 50-50 ratio without cutting the exhibition program.”

Bruce B. Dayton, museum trustee: “A real strong interest in art — that’s the No. 1 criterion [for recruiting trustees]. And then the ability to give and the ability to raise money.”

Lora Urbanelli, director, Montclair Art Museum: “We’re all talking about how to get this next crop comfortably fluent, if not conversant, in the arts. We have to provide people with the tools to learn how to look.”

Best Straddle:

Thomas P. Campbell, director, Metropolitan Museum: “This is a good moment to refocus and reinvigorate. We want people to know we’re here and have been for 138 years. We’re a place of infinite experiences. Last year there were something like 20,000 different events from lectures to tours. A tour leaves every 15 minutes. It’s really quite phenomenal.”

 

My thanks to Doug McLennan at Diacritical for introducing my AJ blog earlier this week. I am glad to be here.

Then yesterday Doug posted “Is the NEA Bad for the Arts?” about cultural policy, which sure brought back memories. It was 10 years ago this coming August that I wrote an article for the New York Times about the Pew Charitable Trust’s effort to get the nation to focus on culture. The key paragraph:

Over the next five years, the Pew plans to devote about 40 percent of its culture budget, some $50 million, toward getting policymakers to focus on issues like arts financing, intellectual property rights, zoning in historic areas and an arts curriculum for public schools. The effort will involve academic research, opinion polls and more media coverage, among other things.

The Pew later retrenched, ending its efforts. But Stephen K. Urice, who headed the project for the Pew, was right when he told me: ”The next Presidential election should be the last one in which the parties are without a cultural policy plank in their platforms. But first they need to have smart academics, think tanks and data focusing on this, and that’s where we’re headed….We’re talking about developing an infrastructure for understanding the role of culture in America.”

That infrastructure — though a little bigger now — still doesn’t exist.

I was very interested in the subject then, and remain so; I hope to find more developments.

Here’s the link to my 1999 article — “Heavyweight Foundation Throws Itself Behind the Idea of a Cultural Policy.”

In the business world, this would be illegal collusion. In opera, it’s a way to help struggling companies survive.

I wish I could say it was money, but it’s not. And the idea was too little, too late for the Baltimore Opera Company and the Connecticut Opera, which were too crippled to avoid being shut down in recent months. But maybe the information-sharing that Opera America decided to begin last fall will help its nearly 200 member

companies through this recession. It’s a little idea, but it may be a useful one for other arts organizations, too.

Since December, Opera America has been convening monthly telephone conference calls for its members’ general directors. During the calls, they discuss their operations, the remedial measures they’re taking, what works, what doesn’t. All very practical stuff.  

“We talk about strategies, and share our best ideas,” Marc A. Scorca (left), Opera America’s president/CEO, told me. So far, 80 pecent of his members have participated in at least one of the monthly calls. At that rate, they have to be learning something useful. After each call, Opera America circulates summaries of what was said to members, who presumably pass them on to their boards, Scorca said. (I certainly hope they are doing that — boards need this information.)  

The program has been so well-received that Opera America recently started…

[Read more…] about Opera World Collusion

Every year the World Economic Forum, also known as Davos, selects a crop of 200 to 300 Young Global Leaders of Tomorrow. “Extraordinary” people all, they’re supposed to work together on global problems, using their knowledge and energy to make the world a better place. Drawn from the business, academic, non-profit, arts and media worlds, they meet at biannual summits, plus other Forum events, and collaborate on various initiatives. They network.

I have no idea what actual good comes of this. But I thought it would be interesting to see who from the arts made the 2009 list, which was announced last month. It has 230 names; from the arts come… 

[Read more…] about Who are the world’s arts leaders of the future?

Maybe the wave of censure directed at several museums for selling art from their collections has had a positive impact: yesterday, the Indianapolis Museum of Art announced that it has created and put online a searchable database of the art it has decided to deaccession, following a review of its collections begun in 2007. 

You can see what has been sold for what amount and what will be sold. In the future, IMA promises to link proceeds received from deaccessioned works to the new art they purchased. (That, of course, is the only way money from deaccessions is to be used, in accordance with Association of Art Museum Directors’ policies.) IMA also posted its deaccessioning policy.

If other museums do this, I haven’t seen it. I looked at some of the usual suspects (the Guggenheim, MoMA, etc.) just in case someone snuck it in while no one was watching, but — zip on deaccessions. Therefore, kudos to Max Anderson, head of IMA, for knowing the value of transparency.

I hope others follow his lead. If museums are going to clean house from time to time — and they are — let them at least do it in public, giving advance word.

You can see the IMA database here. 

For the last couple of years, IMA has also published a (sort of) real-time dashboard with statistics on museum energy use, the number of new works on view, the endowment’s value, the number of hours spent conserving art works, membership, and attendance, etc. One savvy person whose opinion I respect dismisses the dashboard as a gimmick — and maybe it is. I still like it.

Photo: American Art Gallery, IMA, Courtesy IMA