The big funding shift from endowments and government appropriation to earned income have driven the shift of museums (and many other charities) to a more businesslike approach (not to mention the emergence of corporate-type leadership of Glenn D. Lowry and Lawrence Small).
The promised report of the Smithsonian Arts External Review Committee has shown up on the Smithsonian's web site. It turns out that yesterday's news reports were reasonably accurate in reporting the specific points made about the individual museums, their strengths and weaknesees.
What the full report adds is a good thumbnail of the history of the Smithsonian art museums, which have always been overshadowed by the organization's scientific programs. But even more interesting to me was a quick run-down of the changes that have taken place in musuems over the last half century that are behind the report's strategic observations. Intentionally or not, it is an explanation for the emergence of the current crop of museum and charity leaders (like current Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small) and also for the problems they are encountering: trying to run large charities in a world that requires them to run more like businesses, but not too much. I'm going to quote the section in full:
The fund raising landscape.
Until the 1960s, most art museums could depend for their operating costs on income from their endowments, and in some cases on municipal appropriations, supplemented by large annual gifts from trustees. As expenses rose while endowments generally did not, a gap developed that most museums have struggled hard to close. Apart from getting more donations, their main method has been to generate earned income of various kinds (restaurant, merchandise, catering). Doing so successfully has required strong attendance and thus has given further impetus to the need for dramatically significant events, primarily loan exhibitions, which in the past three decades have become art museums’ most conspicuous public activity.
Raising more money at all levels of a museum’s constituency required hiring new staff and providing new services for members and prospects. The National Endowments and private philanthropic foundations have helped provide money for programming, but seldom for endowments or operating expenses. Corporations also entered the picture, but their motives have been only partly philanthropic. Their support in recent years has gone to museum projects with clear benefits for marketing their image and sales. A newer generation of extremely wealthy entrepreneurs has come forward with generous intentions and often with explicit desires and beliefs that have not always been easy to square with art museums’ values and missions.
Organizational changes.
Impelled by both idealistic and practical motives, art museums have been changing the way they operate. The desire to provide the public with a wider array of attractions has coexisted with a pressing need to raise funds; this has had extensive consequences for how museums are staffed and managed.
Art museums have added to their staffs specialists in education, evaluation, design, marketing, special events, and visitor services, as well as development. They have become more attentive to the needs of visitors — now regarded as “customers” — by soliciting their views, providing for their comfort, and encouraging return visits.
Museums have been sharpening their skills at customer service by observing other nonprofits, such as libraries, orchestras, even places of worship, and also learning techniques from retail businesses, hotels, theme parks, and other successful for-profits. Curatorial staffs have also grown, but not in proportion to other non-art job categories; the nature of curatorial work, which was largely scholarly, has shifted toward the practical under the increased pressure of exhibitions, educational services, and many administrative requirements.
Management practices in art museums have changed under the influence of newer ideas. Management by objectives has been routine for many years. Strategic planning is now commonplace. Staffs have been reorganized into multidisciplinary teams for complex projects such as reinstallations and large exhibitions. There is a higher premium on qualities of flexibility and willingness to put the organization and its mission of service ahead of narrower concerns of departments and specialties. Among museums there has been a trend to longer-term strategic partnerships with other museums, as well as with other kinds of nonprofits such as universities and even with corporations. Although art museums remain a particular kind of organization with many specialized functions and needs, they have been increasingly open to innovation.
HELP! YEARS BACK, MY AUNT, RUTH McCANN,as the WIDOW OF KEVIN McCANN, GAVE A PAINTING TO THE SMITHSONIAN. IT WAS A FAMILY SCENE AND A POSTCARD WAS ISSUED OF THE PAINTING. FAMILY MEMBERS HAVE LOST THE LAST OF THE POSTCARDS, THE I.D. OF THE PAINTING AND NAME OF THE ARTIST.
BOTH McCANN'S ARE DECEASED. KEVIN McCANN SERVED ON PRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S STAFF AND WAS PRESIDENT OF DEFIANCE COLLEGE IN OHIO. HIS WIFE SERVED AS INTERIM PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE WHEN HE WAS WITH GEN'L EISENHOWER AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. WITH KNOWLEDGE OF THE PAINTING, PLEASE FORWARD TO MY E-MAIL ADDRESS.
tbjtonto@aol.com
Posted by: BETTY THOMPSON | November 20, 2007 at 04:04 PM