Hope & Dread, Episode 7: Executive Session
Today you'll hear from that echelon who are really running America's museums: the board. This is where the real power in museums resides. We'll find out if these trustees have fully grasped the issues that museums need to tackle today. Do they have ambitious enough solutions? Who makes sure the museum sticks to its mission, or that the trustees are doing their job? After all - who governs the governors?
Tune in to find out.
New episodes available every other Wednesday.
For more, follow @artand_media on Instagram / Twitter / LinkedIn / Facebook
Guests: Sarah Arison, Fred Bidwell, Pam Kramlich, Jill Kraus, Larry Marx, Brooke A. Minto, Victoria Rogers and Marc Schwartz
Image by Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur, in collaboration with Pharrell Williams for Time Magazine. @forfreedoms
Transcript:
Charlotte Burns:
This is Hope and Dread. I'm Charlotte Burns.
Allan Schwartzman:
And I’m Allan Schwartzman. This is a program about the tectonic shifts in power in art.
Charlotte Burns:
We wanted to hear from people who are making change, and people who are resisting change.
This is a show about power. So today you'll hear from the people who are really running America's museums: the trustees.
Sarah Arison:
Stagnation will be the death of certain organizations.
Pam Kramlich:
Life isn't fair. I just have to believe that people are trying their best and that's all we could do.
Marc Schwartz:
There does need to be significant institutional change.
Allan Schwartzman:
This is where the real power is. It is the epicenter of the problem. So this is really where change happens across the board. Yes, sorry. Pun intended.
Charlotte Burns:
Over the past three episodes, we've heard so many issues, complaints, protests, and problems. Today's episode is where the buck stops.
We've reached the top of the museum power pyramid. We'll find out if the trustees have really grasped the issues we've been talking about. Do they have ambitious enough solutions? Who makes sure the museum sticks to its mission, that the trustees are doing their job? We'll ask the question: who governs the governors.
So, what do museums need now? Here's Larry Marx, who's on the Board of Directors at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Larry Marx:
I think it really takes an enlightened director to often educate the boards of museums. Because if you look at a lot of boards of museums, there are a lot of old White guys and they really did need to be educated.
The museum really needs representation from its constituents, which are the employees and the artists, and the audience at large—the community at large that they serve.
Allan Schwartzman:
Larry's an example of a board member who does represent, in the broadest sense, tradition, stability, the old guard; but he is also an extremely enlightened, thoughtful, humane person who happens to sit on the board of an institution led by a visionary leader, Annie Philbin. This is a very rare set of extremely positive conditions.
Unfortunately, Larry is in the minority and one hopes that his thinking can influence greatly and lead the way for others.
Charlotte Burns:
Larry's may not be commonly-held opinions, but whether museum boards like it or not, times are changing, fast.
Museums have always been inward-looking, to an extent. It's not just the exhibits that are roped off, but their corridors of power especially so.
That needs to change, says Sarah Arison. She's the president of the Arison Arts Foundation and Vice-Chair of the board of MoMA PS1 and a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Sarah Arison:
The philanthropic world that I grew up in was a very proprietary one. It was, these are our donors, our artists, our programs, and there was a real reluctance to share with other organizations in any way. Whether it was a fear of donors being poached, or whatever it might be, but it was very protected. And one of my personal missions is the concept of collaboration. Because I think in our field, resources are very limited.
Charlotte Burns:
There are some ambitious, energetic, new collaborations emerging; often supported by important bodies, including the Ford and the Andrew W. Mellon foundations.
We've heard about the organization Museums Moving Forward in episodes one and five. Its mission, according to co-leader Mia Locks, is to bring more accountability to the museum sector.
Another collaborative group recently formed is the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums. Here to explain more is its Co-Chair, Victoria Rogers, who is also on the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees at Creative Time and the Brooklyn Museum.
Victoria Rogers:
It was a pioneering idea to think about how do we, as Black board members, get to know one another, like what does that look like? And then what power could we have if we came together?
And so, it is the first time that it's happening, but I feel like it's been a long time coming. The ability to impact change as a collective is obviously stronger than the ability to impact change as an individual. But board members, in general, don't really do it. And so, it's remarkable to have come together, and then also to have come together with this shared mission and goal of improving diversity, equity, and inclusion within our institutions.
Charlotte Burns:
It really is remarkable that board members are forming a coalition outside of the institutional setting. We've heard a lot about collective action in this podcast series from staff within museums. And later, we'll hear from artists and dealers who are thinking this way, too.
Here's Victoria Rogers with more on just how the Black Trustee Alliance works.
Victoria Rogers:
So, the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums is really committed first and foremost to building community and developing insights from that community. And then being able to measure progress as we set goals against those insights for the kind of change that we want to see.
And so, our first plan is to identify one another. There isn't a list or a collective set of “these are all of the Black Trustees of American Art Museums”, but we actually are going out and finding those people.
And so a second goal of ours is really data-driven. We care a lot about being able to measure our progress, and so gathering data and insights, first about that existing group of members that we've identified, but then also about the field and the impact of Black people on the field and on institutions. And then, from that baseline survey, we're going to be repeating it annually to see how that group grows or contracts.
We also are commissioning some studies on the presence of Black people in boardrooms, on collections committees, exhibitions committees, and also in vendor pipelines, too. So we've been thinking really holistically about the impact we can have.
Charlotte Burns:
This kind of information sharing is genuinely radical. For the data nerds amongst us and anyone interested in equity, it really is exciting. Museums just don't team up in this way and nor do their board members.
The Black Trustee Alliance is gathering all kinds of data from tracking institutional power—who's in the boardroom—to information about what the public sees—a.k.a. museum exhibitions and acquisitions.
It is also looking at how the museum spends its money in the community it purports to serve. Is the museum using, for example, local vendors to arrange the flowers at the gala, to bring food trucks at lunchtime, or to provide the toilet roll in the offices?
Some of the ideas are bold and others prosaic, but this is the kind of detailed thinking that museums and their boards are having to undertake. The Black Trustee Alliance sees itself as a resource for museums as they do this work, says executive director, Brooke Minto.
Brooke Minto:
Our hope is always that museums will grow and learn from this kind of partnership and third-party support that we're offering them, but that also in the future, they will be more accountable on their own.
That said, our hope is that over time BTA will be able to support the engagement and further education of a group of research professionals whose expertise and skills sit somewhere at the intersection of social science, arts administration, museum management, art history that can eventually go out into museums and improve upon the work that we do.
Part of our work in partnering is to ensure that equity does not get lost, that it stays at the forefront; that it is not lost after this moment. And that there are systems in place to ensure that this work is done year over year and that it's consistent, and that it's measurable and that it's moving towards progress. It has to be as essential as all of the other work of museums.
Charlotte Burns:
Do you have a sense of how systemic problems are, and how easily or otherwise they might be attended to?
Brooke Minto:
We're getting a better sense of that, but I mean, I think it's pretty clear they are systemic. I don't think that this transformation and change that we're hoping to see will be quick. I think it would be naive to think it would happen in the short term, but I think what we're hoping is to put in place some structures that will ensure this change is maintained, not only happens but is maintained over time.
Charlotte Burns:
Again, the way that our guests are talking informs this idea that we're moving away from the Great Hero ideas of history, art history; art administration, even. People here are talking about real collaboration, about sharing intelligence and collective future-proofing.
And in the spirit of collaboration, the Black Trustee Alliance has been in discussion with Julia Halpern and I about the Burns Halperin Report and about our approaches to data research. We're looking at ways to collaborate in order to advance the work.
Groups like The Black Trustee Alliance and Museums Moving Forward are creating new systems and standards for museums. Is this external pressure what museums need?
It's a layer of accountability that's common in corporate culture, says the philanthropist Marc Schwartz. He's the former Emeritus Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Marc Schwartz:
Non-profits have audits done by their outside accounting firms to make sure their finances are in order. There needs to be some kind of independent group that makes sure that non-profit institutions, no matter what they are, stay true to their mission.
Charlotte Burns:
Allan, we've heard a lot here. Do you think boards need more education and more outside pressure to create the change that people are calling for?
Allan Schwartzman:
I think the pressure is already on them. Some are reacting more clearly than others. But they need mechanisms for being able to step back, rethink what the museum is, who it's for, how the board functions, and so on.
I think they really need to revisit their mission statements to redefine or reaffirm what the purpose of the museum is, who it serves, how it evolves and grows.
They need a process for self-examination of the board and of the institution and for working with the director —and they need the notion of change and self-awareness to be built into their DNA.
Charlotte Burns:
That's such an important point, this idea of whether the museum is fixed or whether it can evolve. Really comes back to the question we asked in the first museum episode, which is: can museums change, or do we simply need new institutions?
That links us to the next big question: Who governs the governors? Who checks that the trustees are doing their jobs well? Museums have grown out of a noblesse oblige model; this idea that privileged people have a responsibility towards those in society with less standing and wealth. Whilst the institution itself has grown and come to resemble a corporation, its governance remains rooted in the style of a gentleman's club—and often, one struggling to accept new members and new ideas.
Every level of the museum is bound by hierarchy. Everyone, including the director, answers to someone else. Everyone, that is, apart from the board.
Here's Larry Marx and Marc Schwartz again.
Larry Marx:
There is no governance of governance, that's for sure. I can tell you the boards that I'm aware of, that very little thought is put into that. Are you really adhering to your governance and fulfilling the missions of the museum? Or even should the mission be changed?
Marc Schwartz:
There's increasing incidences where they're not staying true to their mission. It can be because a board member has too much influence. It can be because the museum's struggling for funding and needs to go a different direction just to be able to bring in enough money to maintain the museum’s viability or institution’s viability. So how do you make sure that an institution is staying true to its mission? Governance, to me, is the critical issue going forward.
Charlotte Burns:
The mainframe supporting the growth of museums is money, and most of that money comes from trustees. So the bigger the museum's ambitions get, the bigger the boards. What's the problem with that? Well, you can get mission creep, knowledge gaps, groupthink. Everything, quite frankly, can become harder to handle.
Here's Larry and Marc again.
Larry Marx:
A lot of boards are pretty overwhelming in terms of their size. It's not the most productive environment to get 30 people in a room and hope they're going to come up with something great.
Marc Schwartz:
The size of boards at museums has to be really examined. You really should have a board where each vote has equal weight. And I don't think you can do that unless you have a really deeply informed and engaged board. And the larger it gets, it's more difficult for so many different reasons to have board members that are on a level playing field.
Charlotte Burns:
So, why did boards get so big?
Marc Schwartz:
Boards first grew over the years because you needed to add wealthy donors to the board—because if they weren't on the board, then there was this fear that they wouldn't make large donations.
And then you've seen additional growth for a good reason over the last few years because it's become important that boards represent their communities better. So now you've got a second wave of growth. And while that's good that the boards are much more diversified, you've now increased the size of the boards to an even larger extent, which makes them much more difficult to manage.
Charlotte Burns:
For some trustees, this moment has challenged what they thought they knew about the museum. Here's the collector and philanthropist, Pam Kramlich, co-founder of the Kramlich Collection and President of the Kramlich Art Foundation and the President of the New Art Trust.
Pam Kramlich:
It's kind of an overwhelming experience that we've been through because I think up to now, I've always believed that the museum is the source of understanding what our world is all about and how we get along with each other. I know when the museum opened in San Francisco, we were looking to outreach to the community so that we could bring more people into the museum. And I think it's been hard to understand exactly what they want.
Charlotte Burns:
Pam is also a trustee of the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art, which hit the headlines in July, 2020. Gary Garrels, the senior curator of painting and sculpture, announced his resignation following an uproar over comments he allegedly made about racial and gender equity during an all-staff Zoom meeting. He'd said something similar during a previous public event. Acknowledging the huge mountain that needed to be scaled. Garrels said parity would take time. In the panel about visibility for women in art, he said, "The other thing I have to say, and I've reassured artists, we will continue to collect white men."
The art world was immediately divided. There were those who said Garrels represented an outdated view of contemporary art, and there were just as many, perhaps more, who rushed to his defense saying he was a curator with a long history of supporting women artists, artists of color, and queer artists, and that he'd done so ahead of the curve.
For the museum leadership in San Francisco, it was a moment of crisis and introspection.
Pam Kramlich:
When we had the mix-up in the museums, we were really trying to figure out what was it that we all did wrong? I mean, where were we missing in our ability to communicate with the public?
Charlotte Burns:
The scenario at SFMOMA was the perfect maelstrom of internal communication breakdown, public outcry, and social media furore. Lots of people working in museums are afraid of talking openly for fear of retaliation or being canceled online. I asked Sarah Arison how real that concern is.
Sarah Arison:
The very extreme kind of cancel culture that's going on can be really difficult to navigate. It is very easy to say very mean things virtually. While there is this technological whiplash and people can say anything about anybody at any time, I think it is still really important to spend time in person whenever possible to humanize it, and then you're able to actually have a productive discussion about it.
I would like to really facilitate more communication. Let's let the staff understand why this person is a board member. Why did they get involved? What are they passionate about? What do they want for the future of the museum? Why are certain decisions being made? If there was greater communication, I think that it could really make things better.
Charlotte Burns:
This lack of communication that is dogging the field. We've interviewed so many people for this series and have been shocked, really, at how broken communication really is. So many people are really invested in the art world. They really want the best for it but they’re not talking to one another. Allan, that lack of communication is one of the central themes we were hoping to address with this series.
Allan Schwartzman:
For sure. As everything gets bigger, it gets more compartmentalized, and that clearly has happened in our museums and throughout the entire art system. We have an awareness gap and a communication gap.
Sometimes what naturally happens is a kind of attack/defense pattern, when in fact, I think, if everyone could stay step back, take a breath, reflect, you would see that, more commonly than not, boards, directors, curators, audiences do all want the same things. They just need to define what they are and find effective ways to be communicating them and thinking them through.
Charlotte Burns:
Several trustees we talked to say that they're aware that the model is flawed, but they point out that the realities of funding museums are tough. Here's Victoria Rogers, Pamela Kramlich, and the collector, Jill Kraus, who's also a board member of New York's MoMA and New Museum of Contemporary Art.
Victoria Rogers:
Because we don't have sufficient government funding for these spaces, if there wasn't philanthropy, I don't know if they would exist. Right? So that's what the stakes are. It's really clear. And I just wonder sometimes if people fully understand that.
Pam Kramlich:
Unfortunately, the way the world works is you have to run an institution and it has to pay for itself. And I think the public forgets that without the board of trustees and without the money going in through the board, the museum wouldn't exist. And so that's where I think we have to be willing to accept each other for who we are.
Jill Kraus:
I know there's a whole group of people who believe that wealthy people shouldn't be on the boards of institutions. You know, that there should be some more egalitarian way to do this. And I understand that. And I don't believe that every board member should be there for money. I really don't. But without people of means on these boards, these institutions are going to struggle into the future. Unless there's some other way to raise money.
Charlotte Burns:
Much of this is down to the fact that there is so little public investment in culture, says the collector and philanthropist Fred Bidwell, who's the executive director of FRONT International and a trustee of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Fred Bidwell:
In the United States, effectively zero public support for the arts. When you look at what is really available in government support, it's infinitesimal. It's tough for us to imagine how to break out of some of the issues, this sort of concentration of power and influence with wealthy donors, if there isn't some public dollars to balance that out. Otherwise, it's all going to be run by a small cadre of the very wealthy.
Allan Schwartzman:
If the board can step back, look at itself and re-identify the museum for the public civic institution it is, to embed within its missions and goals the needs to be responsive to a wide range of audiences to which the museum is refuge and a meeting place, then there is the basis on which to begin to recognize, in a broader way, the true public significance of museums—and therefore to perhaps open up funding to support museums as being central to a healthy and well-functioning culture, rather than as a bastion of the elite.
Charlotte Burns:
This brings us to the current model, often called the pay-to-play model, as in, trustees get a board seat in exchange for their donation. Some board members disagree with the terminology, finding it divisive.
Here's Victoria Rogers.
Victoria Rogers:
The pay-to-play model being? Because I don't know if there's much playing.
I do think that there's this false narrative around the power that board members want to have. And so it's a brain trust to draw upon, but not a dictatorial leadership team of an institution. I'm sure there are examples where that is not true, but I think to universalize that is false and actually a really dangerous place to be because it starts to have a sort of us versus them, the board versus the staff and that, I think, is why no-one shows up to be a board member is to be in that kind of antagonistic relationship.
I think everyone is coming with an open heart and mind and a desire to be supportive. And so, I am fearful of narratives like that pay-to-play idea because, at least for me, when I hear that it makes me want to disengage.
Charlotte Burns:
It's no surprise that we're talking about cash, but trustees are also aware that on better-run boards, there should be as much expertise washing around as there is money. Here are Fred Bidwell and Sarah Arison again.
Fred Bidwell:
Where there's money, there's power, and that means that boards are often larded with wealthy, powerful people. I think we've got to try and help people understand that it can't be purely pay-to-play. We've got to move away from this idea that you've got to pay $50,000 a year to the museum to even be on the board. It's so exclusionary that it almost guarantees that the board will be out of step with the community. So, there must be some sort of hybrid model, where there are people on the board who are there because they're influential, they speak for the community, and those who are on the board, because they are willing to invest their treasure in supporting the institution. Both are valid, and both are needed.
Sarah Arison:
Just because you have somebody who can write a really big check, that doesn't mean they'll make a good board member. That doesn't mean they care about the mission. That doesn't mean they want to move the institution forward. I think being a good board member means if you can, contributing the dues, but also showing up, being engaged, being there for the director. Dues-paying board members are so important to museums. I mean, it is not ticket sales that is keeping these institutions going. That's for sure. I also, at the same time, would like to re-examine the definition of value from a board member. There are so many other ways that board members can bring value.
Charlotte Burns:
All of the trustees we talked to are aware and willing to bring more diverse voices into the museum leadership. All of them are in favor of better communication. But how is the balance of power structured around those new voices?
One trustee suggested creating a kind of kids table for them, having a second board comprising community members that was separate to the money board, keeping real power separate, in effect.
Money is just one tool at the table, but in reality, money tends to talk louder than everything else, and the person writing the largest check tends to have the megaphone.
Here's Marc Schwartz.
Marc Schwartz:
Certainly, extra weight is given in many institutions because it's a larger check, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting bad decisions or selfish decisions because my experience is that a lot of the people that are writing the larger checks are also people that can be completely selfless in trying to make the best decisions for the institution.
The problem is that there are situations where that isn't the case, and you can have someone who's writing that big check who's narcissistic, has very specific interests that aren't in the best interest overall of the institution. And that's why these issues of governance have to really be thought out much better for all institutions in order to go forward. Maybe there's some better solutions out there.
Charlotte Burns:
In our world, money is power, and “abuse of power comes as no surprise”, as the artist Jenny Holzer put it so well. This is where the lack of industry standards and external governance gets really tricky. What to do in a situation where a dominant board member is also bad for the museum? How do boards deal with bullies? It's difficult.
Here's Jill Kraus.
Jill Kraus:
In the case of institutions, boards need very strong board leadership, and very strong leadership from the presidents or the directors of their institutions. And if one of those or both of those slip, I worry.
Charlotte Burns:
Maybe there's a way of separating patronage from philanthropy, donations from volunteerism.
Here's Marc Schwartz.
Marc Schwartz:
Is there a different way to engage philanthropists and still have them support their institutions without guaranteeing them a board seat? Some of the issues that have occurred rightfully so with artists withdrawing works from different shows because of where that money came from that supported that show. Would that occurred if that money had just been given as general operating funds to the museum versus having a name on a wing or being the major underwriter of the show? I think those instances would be much rarer. it would be great if we could find ways to engage philanthropists without them putting demands on an institution.
This isn't a new story. This has been the challenge that institutions have had for such a long period of time.
Charlotte Burns:
Allan, in your opinion, what does it take to be a good board member?
Allan Schwartzman:
I would start with the question: what does a board need to be to function in a healthy, productive, responsive way to the institution and how it functions? Within that, there are what a friend of mine, who sits on a number of boards, refers to as “good donors”, the person who rises above their own individual interests and needs for the greater benefit that may have impact on how other board members go about how they look at the institution, their role, and their levels of generosity. Some people are openly generous and some people are conditionally generous.
I think if boards begin to recognize that convening power should be just as present at the table as money power, that could begin to shift things significantly. People who were there because they have ideas, because they impact others, because they are reflective of the times in ways that the boards may not be as directly in contact with. If you put these two elements together within a board, you don't change the function and responsibility of the board, but you equip it to far better be actively responsive to times as they change, and as needs change.
Charlotte Burns:
One thing that keeps occurring to me through this episode is something that Deana Haggag said, I think in our first episode, which is that money has created more problems than philanthropy can solve. Do you think that this model of boards, of a small group of people in a room with good intent trying to represent a public—that, in reality, they're quite far removed from—can work?
Allan Schwartzman:
I think that's why they need to rethink themselves because, yes, in most instances, or in many instances, probably in more instances than not, boards are at a remove. Everybody's volunteering. Everybody's doing something in the middle of doing everything else that they do. There's a structural problem that needs to be addressed. And I think if you can address the structural problem, then it would make clearer to what extent a board may be fundamentally unwell and not in the best position to serve its institution and its institution’s missions, or not.
I recognize we've spoken in previous episodes about ‘is this model too broken to fix?’, and I completely agree with Thelma Golden when she said that it's important that new models be created, and that they are, in fact, being created as we speak.
At the same time, what the traditional institutions have in terms of facility, presence in community, extraordinary scope of collections, in most cases very great expertise, and also prominence within communities, says to me that it's definitely worth the efforts, however challenging they may be, to bring a greater consciousness to identifying structural problems and seeking to set things well.
Charlotte Burns:
We tend to, and journalists are guilty of this especially, talk about museums as monolithic entities. But, doing the interviews for this show really reinforced the fact that each museum is a completely different beast.
And the question, I think, probably for the future, for the boards, is what kind of museum do you want to be? I think it was Miki Garcia who said in our interview, some museums may just want to float away as precious jewels and stay that way. And others want to be more vigorously grounded in their civic roles within their communities. And that depends on the board.
And it also is really interesting to think about the geography and how specific things are that way. So being on the board of a major museum in New York City is totally different than being on a board almost anywhere else because of the power and wealth of the institutions in New York.
You kind of see group-think regionally. With our data studies, there's this really interesting phenomenon where the big museums in Los Angeles come in at roughly the same level as each other, despite the fact that we're talking about quite different museums: you know, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art compared to The Hammer Museum, they have really different agendas, but their gender and racial representation, it's roughly the same. And it seems to be a really local phenomenon. We see it at all the Los Angeles museums, and that's a smaller community. In New York, you see much greater disparity.
Allan Schwartzman:
New York museums are by and large older and more established than, certainly, in a city like Los Angeles. So they do have a longer history and profile that gets built upon a tradition. That can naturally make it a greater and more effective or more lasting magnet for wealth, while at the same time it also perhaps creates greater traditions that are harder to step outside of and examine and rethink.
In Los Angeles, it just so happens that between Annie Philbin, Director of The Hammer, Michael Govan, the Director at LACMA, and now with Johanna Burton, Director at [the Museum of Contemporary Art] MOCA, you have three of the more significant museums in that city who are being led by very progressive, thoughtful leaders who are right for their time.
I think if you look at smaller cities where the museum doesn't play as central a role, it becomes far more challenging because the money narrows down very, very quickly, if you don't have a very beneficent leading patron who just writes the big checks, or if you don't have a growing community of, let's say, collectors or other patrons who believe in the museum as a civic institution, then the financial challenge is so great that I think it is harder for those kinds of museums—not necessarily to step back and examine themselves—but to define alternatives. Or to identify solutions within their communities.
Charlotte Burns:
When you talk about LA, it's really interesting to think of the scope of financial scales of the museums there. We also have the Getty [Foundation], which funds the Pacific Standard Time Project, for instance, did a huge amount to bring undiscovered artists to light.
And also the idea of smaller cities and these museums being more financially precarious is absolutely true, but another interesting thing that we saw in the data was that these smaller institutions are often leading the way in terms of changing with the times. And you can see really clearly, to Jill's point about leadership, you can see the impact of specific directors on those institutions really, really clearly in the data. You can see the year that they joined, and you can see things progressing and evolving from that moment. Or like you talked about the top of the show with Annie Philbin.
Sometimes the larger museums are slower. And I was reminded of last night reading Farah Nayeri's new book Art and Power. Farah's a guest on this show. And she interviewed Ann Temkin at MoMA about the big rehang of the museum that MoMA had in 2019. And Ann said it was two things. It was a generational shift: there were a bunch of curators that came to power that could make those changes now, and there was also the shift from essentially the audience, that the audience was placing different demands on the institution. And Ann said, I'm paraphrasing here, if MoMA hadn't changed, the world would've changed regardless, and MoMA would've been the dinosaur by now.
And that point about change really seems to be the dominant theme of these museum shows, that those institutions that can change should and will likely survive. And those that can't, may not.
Allan Schwartzman:
Or, maybe a museum that is in such a troubled state and doesn't have the finances and the momentum of support to sustain themselves, maybe those become great vessels through which something radically different can happen.
The other thing about institutions in the United States is that, even under tough conditions, or even in places that are challenged beyond their capacity to survive, we do have this capacity for reinvention built into how we think.
Charlotte Burns:
So, Allan, you believe that change is possible for our museums. If you're listening, why don't you write to us and let us know what you think?
Before we round out today's show, here's a reminder to join us in two weeks' time for our next episode, for something totally different. We'll be heading to Portland, Oregon, taking a big step back to look at culture in America today.
To end today's episode, we asked our trustees whether, looking ahead, they feel hope or dread.
Sarah Arison:
I have hope because I see institutions and organizations thinking differently about their priorities and their programing and their communities. I have hope that these conversations will continue to move forward and that people will continue to be engaged and thoughtful. And I have hope that these conversations will be productive—and about building people and missions up, instead of tearing them down.
Pam Kramlich:
I'm very hopeful. I think we've got an exciting future. I think that museums are going to become more and more important, rather than less important. But I just think that they do need to figure out how to do that in a way which is not happening quite at the moment.
Larry Marx:
I'm a super optimist by nature, and unfortunately, that's been thrown into question in my own mind, my optimism, and it's basically because I'm afraid whoever shouts the loudest is heard the most, and I'm not always sure that's the sanest voice in the room.
Victoria Rogers:
I certainly feel hope with the power of the collective, I'm a believer that change will happen and come.
Fred Bidwell:
I'm an optimist, I'm very hopeful. I don't dread the future. This is a wonderful time to be involved, because there's historic change happening, and needed change, and I'm grateful that I'm a tiny part of that change.
CREDITS and GOODBYES
Tune into Hope and Dread every second Wednesday and subscribe wherever it is you find your podcasts.
Follow us on social media for related show content, and tell us what you think @artand_media.
Hope and Dread is brought to you by Art&, the new editorial platform created by Schwartzman&.
The executive producer is Allan Schwartzman, who co-hosts the show together with me, Charlotte Burns of Studio Burns, which produces the series.
Robert Bound is our associate editor.
Holly Fisher mixes and edits the sound.
Additional research has been provided by Julia Hernandez, Calder Singer and Ali Nemerov.
Theme music by the inimitable Philip Glass.
