Tunnels, Diversity, and the Berkshires and Happy New Year!
The Important, Urgent, and Tunnels
I thought the article by Tim Cynova would make a nice addition to the topics covered in chapter 4, “The Adaptive Arts Organization.” How do we help create and sustain organizations that balance the important and the urgent?
Cynova started the article by quoting the 2014 book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eddar Shafir.
“Resource scarcity leads us to borrow, and that pushes us deeper into scarcity. Why? Because when we have scarce resources we tunnel (i.e., we focus on the here and now, the fires, what needs to get done right now).”
That seemed an accurate description of what can go on in an arts organization.
The full article introduced a number of interesting ideas that could make for a lively class discussion. The “Life Examples” cited seemed relatable to situations that might arise in arts organizations. One example pointed out that an infusion of one-time financial resources can fail to produce long-term sustainable results despite the best of intentions.
The whole topic of tunneling, and resource scarcity connected for me because I often have conversations with students about the tyranny of the urgent and its impact on undermining ever getting to what’s important. It is hard for people and organizations to get beyond dealing with urgent problems. Brainstorming with students about strategies for how to balance these two pressures could be fun.
Diversifying Audiences
It is always nice to read about a success story focused on an arts organization making a greater impact in its community. The article from Artnet News about the High Museum in Atlanta could be incorporated into a number of chapters, but it seems most applicable to chapter 11, “Marketing and the Arts.” The article stated that the High Museum increased its nonwhite audience from 15% to 45% in the past two years. Wow.
There was helpful information in the short article about how they were able to achieve these impressive results. The focus on areas such as content, strategy, fees, the docents, and staff diversity provided good ideas that seem very applicable beyond the museum world. The article also noted the museum was making an effort to be more accommodating to people with disabilities. One example was they hired “an ASL interpreter for every public program.”
Back to the Berkshires
The Berkshire Museum deaccessioning saga continues. This story was first mentioned in the October 2017 Management and the Arts Blog. An opinion piece published in the Artnet News blog earlier this December seemed to me to be a good launch pad for a discussion about how to steer a board decision-making process and the impact design may have in a presentation.
It was good to see the museum employing scenario-driven decision making. However, when a set of scenarios are presented in such a way as to significantly reduce options, it defeats the purpose of using this approach. For example, Felix Salmon pointed out how the scenario matrix used fonts and boldface text to help steer the decision to sell off some of the museum’s art collection.
The process of creating other scenarios the museum could have considered might be an interesting assignment or topic for discussion. For example, what information was left out of the scenarios presented to the Berkshire Museum board? What would have been a more useful set of scenarios for the board to consider?
The fact that board documents were made public also seems like a great research opportunity. It isn’t often that we get the chance to look at what goes on inside a board meeting. The Berkshire Museum also has the makings of what could be a great case study or journal article.
It is interesting that in the face of the museum’s financial problems, there appear to be enough resources to fight this prolonged court battle. It seems to me that even if the museum wins, it is still a loss.
The latest court action in December extended the injunction against the sale until January 29, 2018. Stay tuned.
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Scarcity and the Non-Profit People Paradox
Tim Cynova, Chief Operating Officer at Fractured Atlas, December 21, 2017.
How Does The Scarcity Trap Relate to Prioritizing People Ops?
When we tunnel on the urgent — things like making payroll, or getting people to purchase tickets to our events, or reaching our crowdfunding campaign goal, or producing the annual gala to raise funds… to make payroll and present our events — we often do so at the expense of the important, bigger picture, and without regard to the impact on our people and the opportunity costs such focus exacts on our organizations.
Instead, when we focus on prioritizing people, and their capacity relative to our other institutional concerns, we unlock a powerful force and leverage our competitive advantage. So, how much time, money, and slack would you need before you pushed People Ops to the number one thing on your list? And when contemplating that answer, take a moment to consider that our people *are* our organizations.
Link to the full post: https://blog.fracturedatlas.org/scarcity-and-the-non-profit-people-paradox-a59852ea9192
How the High Museum in Atlanta Tripled Its Nonwhite Audience in Two Years
As museums across the US seek to diversify their audiences, the High offers a valuable case study.
Julia Halperin, December 22, 2017, Artnet News
It’s a fact the art world has long known: Museums in the US have a diversity problem.
The demographics of museum audiences and staff are wildly out of step with the country’s population. According to a survey conducted in 2010 by Reach Advisors—the most recent comprehensive study available—museum- and gallery-goers in the US are 89 percent white. That’s significantly more than the US population in 2010 (72 percent white) and vastly more than the US population today (62.6 percent—and dropping).
Most museums understand that in order to remain relevant, they will have to find a way to diversify their audiences. But many have not figured out how—or made it enough of a priority.
The High Museum in Atlanta, however, has done both. Over the past two years, the museum’s nonwhite audience has tripled, from 15 percent to 45 percent. Now, its visitors more closely—although not exactly—mirror the population of the Atlanta metro area, of which 51 percent are people of color.
Link to the full post: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/high-museum-atlanta-tripled-nonwhite-audience-two-years-1187954
Secret Documents Reveal How the Berkshire Museum Manipulated Its Board Into Liquidating Its Collection (Opinion)
The documents show how the museum’s leadership convinced the board to sell off 40 works—and made them think they had no choice in the matter.
Felix Salmon, December 13, 2017, ArtNet News
How does a museum end up deciding to sell off substantially all of its most valuable artworks? That’s a question rarely answered. Now, however, thanks to a lawsuit from the indefatigable Berkshire Eagle, the Berkshire Museum has been forced to reveal just that. The results—in the form of some 60 pages of formerly sealed internal documents—are eye-opening.
The story told by the newly released papers, which were made public on Monday, starts in April 2016. That’s when the board of the Berkshire Museum was presented with a detailed report from TDC, a group of museum consultants in Boston. In their “summary of capitalization needs,” TDC concluded that the museum needed about $2 million to pay down debt and about $6 million to improve the facilities. They also penciled in about $23 million in permanent endowments, a sum much greater than the museum’s existing $7.3 million endowment. Altogether, they concluded, the museum needed “an additional $25.61 million in new funds” to “stabilize its operations on multiple dimensions.”
Link to the full post: https://news.artnet.com/opinion/berkshire-museums-newly-released-documents-board-1178129