As political appointees always say, it’s hard to decline a Presidential request and, presumably, almost as hard to turn down a First Lady. Always in the background, too, is the fact that favors bestowed on someone create chits that can later be traded in, most of the time.
I’d bet that some art museum directors are thinking those thoughts right now, because last month Michelle Obama joined with the Institute of Museum and Library Services in an effort called Let’s Move! Museums and Gardens — an anti-obesity initiative that “will provide opportunities for millions of museum and garden visitors to learn about healthy food choices and will promote physical activity through interactive exhibits and programs,” per the IMLS press release.
The goal is worthy. And heaven knows that art museums can use support (not just, or even necessarily, monetary) from the White House. Nonetheless, I hope that art museums will resist this siren call, which has nothing to do with their core missions and is a waste of precious resources.
The “Let’s Move” program was started several months ago by the American Association of Museums, the Association of Children’s Museums and the American Public Gardens Association. Its goal is to help young people learn about nutrition, healthy food choices and physical activity. Great. Those groups have many members for whom programs on those subjects are relevant.
But recently the group widened to include the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Association of African American Museums, the Association of Science-Technology Centers, the American Association for State and Local History, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the Center for the Future of Museums.
Again, most of those are natural fits — but not the AAMD. (Thank goodness the Association of Art Museum Curators didn’t join in.)
Look at the IMLS program guidelines, and you’d be hard-pressed to see anything appropriate for art museums. The program wants museums to provide exhibit spaces where children can be active, offer families and children advice on growing and consuming healthy food, and learn about expending energy through activities versus sitting in front of an electronic device.
There’s no connection with art there (unless an Archimboldo show qualifies…).
Yet so far, eyeballing the list of participating institutions, some art museums have indeed signed on: the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the Bruce Museum, the Luther Brady Art Gallery/GWU, the Bass Museum of Art, the James and Meryl Hearst Center for the Arts, the Newark Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, the Austin Museum of Art, the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum.
OK, a couple of those have natural history components, so they may be able to do something appropriate. But the rest of you, I believe, should rethink, remember your core mission, and pass on participating in “Let’s Move.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of IMLS