The Association of Art Museum Directors released its annual “State of North America’s Museums” survey the other day, and about the best I can say about it is, it’s better than nothing. Or is it?

There has been widespread speculation about rising museum attendance, for example — with me being one of the skeptics. AAMD says that 45% of respondents said attendance rose last year, 29% said it declined, and 22% said there was no change (4% of the respondents were closed). (NB: AAMD president Michael Conforti cited these numbers for 2009 in the president’s statement, though in the survey they are labeled 2010. The numbers for 2009 in the survey are 41% increase, 39% decrease, 17% no change and 3% not open.)  

I’d say, therefore, that it did not rise (29% + 22% = 51%), especially since only 149 of the 193 members of AAMD responded, and those that did are likely to have more positive stories to tell, if past guidance from survey-takers is valid. The AAMD disagrees: Conforti said the trend toward “large increases” in attendance reported last year continued…

Actually, there’s no way to tell: the question is too broad — a museum could have 50 more visitors and report and increase or 5,000 fewer and report a decline, or vice versa.

This is my constant complaint about AAMD’s surveys: they mean nothing (at least the disclosed parts; in times past, AAMD collected information that it did not share with the public/press).

Perhaps we can detect a few trends, though (again, a caveat — the samples may not be comparable):

• For the sixth consecutive year, about half of the respondents say they are making no changes to their exhibition programs.
• For the fourth year, about 70% (74% for 2010) say they are using their permanent collections more. Cumulatively, that’s a pretty big impact.
• Overall revenue continues to decline (since 2008), with support from individuals, foundations, corporations, governments, endowments and earning income declining steeply in both 2009 and 2010.

I’m not going to harp on the need for more and better cultural statistics now: been there, done that, many times.

 

Some articles are joys to write, and they’re not necessarily the ones that write themselves (which are usually news articles). For me, one example is in today’s Wall Street Journal: it’s a “Masterpiece” column I wrote on Adam Elsheimer’s The Flight Into Egypt.

It was a pleasure to write simply because I knew that when I finished, this painting — which is not very well known in the United States — would be seen by so many more people, at least in the paper and on the web (the picture on the WSJ site is, unfortunately, too light, so washed out that the moon is invisible).

Only one U.S. museum, the Kimbell, owns a painting by Elsheimer. It’s a daytime version of the flight into Egypt, a much inferior one, judging from its representation on the web. (It may just be better in person, I don’t know.) So it’s a fair bet that only people who’ve studied art know him.

In truth, I didn’t know about the painting until Eric Gibson, the Leisure and Arts editor at the WSJ, suggested that I see it when I was in Munich last fall. I had already pretty much committed to writing a Masterpiece about Albrecht Altdorfer’s Battle of Issus, which was published on Jan. 2 (I blogged about it here and again about Altdorfer here). Eric directed me to the Elsheimer, too. It’s not easy to find, as I write — it’s in a little cabinet gallery at the Alte Pinakothek, just a few feet from galleries filled with gigantic works by Rubens et. al. You might easily miss it, because it looks very dark from afar. Its beautiful blue sky, with the Milky Way, has to be seen upclose.

For an Elsheimer exhibition in 2006, the National Galleries of Scotland used a detail from the painting for the catalogue cover. Looks like a complete work, doesn’t it?

Here’s a link to today’s article.

 

This year’s special Museums section of The New York Times, published today, was a real surprise: in contrast to last year, no one said anything really dumb. There was no nonsense about making museums into community centers or about everyone’s thoughts about art being equal. I couldn’t find anyone who deserved a raspberry.

Maybe the times have changed people — economic woes have been known to dispatch silly plans to who know where? Maybe silly thoughts, too.

On the other hand, a few people said things worthy of strawberries (though, truth be told, what they said was hardly heroic). Nonetheless, here goes — strawberries to:

Clara Drummond, co-curator of the Morgan Library and Museum’s* A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy: “Teaching is about engaging students by telling a good story and that’s what a good curator does, too.” 

Bonnie Pittman, director, Dallas Museum of Art: “There’s nothing more exciting than watching someone standing in front of a work of art and their soul singing. We can make that happen more often if we do our jobs really well in museums.” Extra points for keeping the DMA “open until midnight once a month for informal programming” (though I’d like to know more about the informal programming).

Julia Marciari-Alexander, deputy director of curatorial affairs and co-interim director, the  San Diego Museum of Art: “People are tending to realize that the idea of a national school, as well as the idea of media-based installation, needs to be reassessed. They tell just one story.” NB: notice that she did not pre-determine the outcome, but said “reassessed.” I hope.

And a few awards, not for quotes, but for leadership:

To the Getty Trust, Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation, at first, but others, too, for starting, funding and orchestrating Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, a multi-million-dollar investment in post-war California art, including the processing and collecting of archives and a series of exhibitions. They begin in 2011.

To (no surprise here) the Indianapolis Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum*, for leading the charge into technology in a good way, with art, not technology, as the star. As IMA’s Robert Stein, chief information officer, put it, “We are helping visitors learn the story behind the content.”

And, even though it is my own article, to Michael E. Shapiro, director of the High Museum, for leading the way on multi-year, multi-pronged partnerships.

 

* A consulting client of mine supports these institutions.

It’s almost spring, and therefore time for the special section on Museums in The New York Times, published tomorrow (Thursday). I will be weighing in later on what people said, giving raspberries of disapproval and strawberries of approval, as I did last year, once I’ve read the whole section.

For now, I’m simply going to send you to my article in the section, “The Art of the Deal Helps Spread Great Art.” It’s about museum partnerships, focusing on the High Museum in Atlanta, where Michael E. Shapiro (right) has proven to be at the forefront of this trend. And I do think it will become a trend, increasingly, for museums that lack great art and need to find a way to bring it to their constituencies.

I spoke just today with Brian Ferriso, director of the Portland Art Museum, and he gets it completely — among several others.

My story is pegged to the High’s recent deal with the National Galleries of Scotland, which will bring two great Titians plus other Venetian masterpieces to Atlanta next fall. Shapiro — now very attuned to the idea of partnerships — explains how many other people were at the same meeting of the Bizot group where he learned of the need of John Leighton, director of the NGS, to raise as much as £50 million to save a Titian, Diana and Callisto, at left, from being sold. Shapiro was the only one to approach Leighton.

Good for him. As I have mentioned before, when writing about the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, many people in the U.S. live in areas that have little art, usually because the cities weren’t around, or weren’t rich, when American museums began forming their collections a century or so ago. We have to figure out a way to bring great art to those populations, too. Partnerships can help.

And here’s a final point Shapiro made, which I had no room for in the article:

For museums to pursue this kind of programming strategy it really requires that the director – and curators and even the board – be open to letting go of their assumptions and about how museums are supposed to work.  It means that we need to be willing to challenge the established practices and be open to exploring new ways of working with other institutions by understanding their needs.  Sometimes just “letting go” can move things forward in new ways.  This may sound obvious but as we have seen in so many other industries, changing the status quo is never as simple as it seems it should be.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the High Museum (top) and National Galleries of Scotland (bottom)

 

Audiences — big audiences — are on everyone’s mind in the museum world, way too often, and way too much, if you ask me. Sure, they count for something, but striving for a huge gate with exhibitions about cars (too many to mention), and jewelry (ditto), and pop culture (e.g., Here Come the Brides at the Newark Museum a few years ago), and nine months of King Tut artifacts (as at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco, and as if a four-month tour of this questionable show were not enough!) isn’t, in my opinion, the way to cultivate a culture of museum-goers.

So I was delighted this morning when I opened my You’ve Cott Mail to find that Thomas Cott had linked to a blog post by management expert Seth Godin titled “Driveby culture and the endless search for wow.”

Godin talks about impact of the Internet, saying that

We’re creating a culture of clickers, stumblers and jaded spectators who decide in the space of a moment whether to watch and participate (or not).

Imagine if people went to the theatre or the movies and stood up and walked out after the first six seconds. Imagine if people went to the senior prom and bailed on their date three seconds after the car pulled away from the curb.

A bit later, he continues:

My fear is that the endless search for wow further coarsens our culture at the same time it encourages marketers to get ever more shallow. That’s where the first trend comes in… the artists, idea merchants and marketers that are having the most success are ignoring those that would rubberneck and drive on, focusing instead on cadres of fans that matter. Fans that will give permission, fans that will return tomorrow, fans that will spread the word to others that can also take action.

He doesn’t make the specific connection to museums and other arts institutions, but I do. They should want “fans that will return tomorrow” and again next month and the months thereafter. And become members, of course.

The expansionism of the last two decades is pushing many museums in the wrong direction, toward more audience and less real art.

As Godin points out, the kind of audience matters, too. The worse part of all this is that what he says is far from new. It simply needs repeating. His post is here.