Visionary Leaders. Board Effectiveness. Museum Leadership and Change.
This month I have selected three sources you can use in discussions about leading, making boards more effective, and a mini case study about the internal and external impact of strategic directions changes at a museum.
Visionary Leaders and Managers in a Partnership
The speech by Susan Medak at the TCG Conference held in Portland, Oregon in June of 2017 resonates with one of the key messages baked into Management and the Arts: the importance of the artist and manager partnership. She makes a good point about how harmful silos can develop in organizations. Her speech is also a good reminder of how important it is to foster collaboration. Building and sustaining a collaborative culture in an organization should be one of the partnership goals of the leadership team.
Board Leadership and Diversity Challenges
The UK-based Arts Professional e-newsletter recently published a story on board (they use “trustee”) leadership and advocacy around the same time that the BoardSource© “Leading with Intent” report was released. Several of the points raised in the United Kingdom Clore Leadership Programme report, “Achieving Good Governance,” can be applied to arts organization in America. For example, the Clore publication noted boards need to exhibit “greater agility and fresh thinking,” and they need to be more “courageously engaged in fundraising.” Those recommendations could be applied to many arts boards in the USA.
The BoardSource© report generated a great deal of discussion with its key finding that “Boards are no more diverse than they were two years ago and current recruitment priorities indicate this is unlikely to change” (p9). There were several other findings in this report that can be integrated into class discussions, and that should also be on the agenda of the next board meeting for many arts organizations in America.
New Leader and New Directions
The article from the Indianapolis Business Journal about Charles Venable, CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), goes into enough detail that students should be able to gain insight on how a leader can make strategic changes in an organization. This news story is an example of how complicated it can be trying to make change happen. The IMA, which according to GuideStar had $36.1 million in expenses in 2015, has had to grapple a significant drop it the value of its endowment since the recession in 2009. Some of the changes made to tackle the fiscal problems of the museum included initiating a general admission fee. While IMA still has free access once a month, introducing a fee was bound to create some pushback in the community.
The article notes that with the hiring of the new CEO, Charles Venable there was an “exodus of curators” which had an impact on the programming at the museum. One needs to be careful about reading too much into this example in the story because staffing changes often take place in an organization when a new leader starts. However, the slow pace of hiring replacement curators is creating a separate set of problems.
The board of IMA seems to have confidence in Venable since it extended his contract through 2026. The article goes on to make the point that the CEO has a plan and a vision for the museum that encompasses more than its gallery spaces. For purposes of a class discussion, I found enough differing points of view in this article to drive a lively conversation. The article also offers an opportunity to have a dialog about how change affects different stakeholders who interact with a cultural institution such as a museum.
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Administrators Can Be Visionaries Too
Artistry isn’t the only thing that makes theatre happen. We ignore that at our peril.
By Susan Medak, American Theatre, September 11. 2017
Susan Medak, longtime managing director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, gave this speech at the TCG National Conference in Portland in June of this year, accepting the Visionary Leadership Award from her former colleague, Meghan Pressman, now managing director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Thank you, Meghan, and many thanks to TCG and the panel that saw fit to recognize my modest contributions to the field. Although I don’t feel particularly visionary and am not at all convinced that I have earned this, I am also very happy to use this moment to actually have the microphone. Because there are a few things I have on my mind.
And I’ve been told that I have two minutes. Can I tell you—one of the aspects of being visionary, I think, is that you don’t follow instructions. So sit back and relax. I have something to say.
There are so many people here whom I’ve learned from or whom I’ve had the enormous pleasure of trying to help learn. One thing I hope you all share with me is a sense of the extraordinary generosity of this field. I don’t think it’s true in every field that you always have somebody who’s looking out to give you a leg up. That’s something I think is a rare and wonderful thing about what we do.
I’ve been teaching and mentoring young managers for more than 15 years, and with increasing frequency I hear this question from them: Will there be a job that I will want when I’m ready to lead a company? Will there be a theatre that will value me for my leadership skills that will also let me be a person of the theatre? Will I be able to find a partner who will include me rather than keeping me at arm’s length? Will I find a partner who appreciates that I am not an arts manager—I’m a theatre manager? Will I find someone who understands that what motivates me is not crunching numbers but making theatre?
To read the rest of the speech go to http://www.americantheatre.org/2017/09/11/administrators-can-be-visionaries-too/
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Arts and cultural trustees must up their game, report says
By Liz Hill, Arts Professional News, United Kingdom, September 15, 2017
Cultural sector trustees must show stronger leadership and become more adaptive and far-sighted, according to an independent strategic review of governance in arts organisations and museums.
The review, commissioned by the Clore Leadership Programme (CLP), concludes that it is no longer sufficient for boards to simply fulfil the fiduciary aspects of their role.
To encourage a step change in the performance of boards, the review authors – David Bryan, Anne Murch and Hilary Carty, who was recently appointed Director of CLP – have recommended that a new Governance Alliance be established to help cultural sector boards develop the skills they need and become bolder in tackling the challenge of a turbulent environment.
Shifting mindset
According to the report, boards need “greater agility and fresh thinking” to support organisations to achieve their ambitions. It concludes that effective governance will only be achieved with a “concerted strategy” to shift both mindsets and behaviours.
To read the rest of the article go to https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/arts-and-cultural-trustees-must-their-game-report-says
For the full report from the UK go Achieving Good Governance at https://cloreleadership.org/Strategic-Review-of-Governance-in-Arts-Organisations-and-Museums.aspx
For the USA perspective on board diversity and governance, download the 2017 BoardSource report LEADING WITH INTENT: 2017 NATIONAL INDEX OF NONPROFIT BOARD PRACTICES at https://leadingwithintent.org/
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Is IMA chief Venable visionary or misguided?
By Lou Harry, Indianapolis Business Joural.com, September 2, 2017
To see how the Indianapolis Museum of Art has fundamentally changed its vision since Charles Venable took over as director and CEO five years ago, you need only look at the annual reports.
Not inside. Just the covers.
The 2010-2011 edition, before his arrival, featured the work of outsider artist Thornton Dial, whom the IMA championed in the first retrospective exhibit devoted to his work, attracting critics from the New York Times, The Washington Post and more.
The cover of the most recent annual report features orchids.
The contrast might not have been intentional. But the orchids serve as a commentary on the museum’s cutbacks on major exhibitions, the kind that generate national interest but cost a bundle to produce or borrow. And they represent Venable’s expanding idea of what the IMA’s grounds—which will be rebranded under the umbrella name Newfields beginning in October—can offer to a wider range of audiences.
For some, Venable is a visionary who is facing the IMA’s fiscal challenges with a new focus on making the museum relevant to more people, including families, couples and millennials looking for experiences. Under his leadership, membership is at a historic high. And the amount the museum is drawing from its endowment to make ends meet is down.
But to critics, Venable is the man who has turned the IMA into a members-only club, de-emphasizing art and accessibility in favor of flowers, food and fun.
When Venable arrived in 2012, the museum was free to the general public (excepting special exhibitions, some programs and parking), as it had been for all but one of the previous 65 years. However, Venable—who previously served as director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville—came to believe the model was unsustainable, in part because the museum was annually drawing down about 8 percent of its endowment, which had fallen from $393 million before the recession to $266 million when he arrived.
To read the full article go to https://www.ibj.com/articles/65237-is-ima-chief-venable-visionary-or-misguided?mc_cid=9e8347c1f3&mc_eid=1a1932085a
Here’s a link to the Indianapolis Art Museum website where you find information about governance, the leadership, and the museum’s strategic plan: http://www.imamuseum.org/about/governance-administration