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Reposted from Inc.
The pandemic changed everything, and for most employees, it's had a resounding impact on how they perform and simply do work. With unprecedented quit rates in the millions every month, employees now demand much more from their organizations than merely "work" and "pay."
With the Great Resignation in full swing, organizations must invest in helping their managers relearn skills that will enable them to address the new, unique needs of their teams.
To navigate this new world of work, here are three steps that will set these leaders apart as we head into a new year.
Although the repercussions of the pandemic may not fully play out for years, one thing is clear: You cannot ignore the mental health of your employees.
Considering the importance of addressing mental health in the workplace and countering these common barriers, there are many strategies leaders can implement to foster a caring culture. For example:
To truly understand what employees want from their organizations, Degreed surveyed 2,400 global employees, including team managers and leaders, across all sectors and company sizes.
The research focused on how the workforce learns by looking at the differences between those who rated their company learning cultures as positive (called promoters) and those who rated their learning cultures as negative (detractors).
In positive learning cultures, managers play a proactive role in their team's learning. They engage their people by creating development plans, finding new opportunities to grow, and sharing feedback on progress. The difference is staggering: Promoters are 270 percent more likely to say their manager supports their development.
Additionally, the research found that professional growth is recognized more continuously than just promotions every few years. Lateral moves, stretch assignments, and mentorships all provide crucial opportunities for individual development.
Limeade, an organization dedicated to researching and improving employee well-being, recently released its new study, "The Great Resignation Update," to examine why the "Great Resigners" left.
When asked how their new employer compared to their previous employer, job changers feel more comfortable disclosing a mental health condition and a greater sense that their new company cares about their well-being.
"When employees feel cared about, they're more committed, engaged, have lower stress, and better well-being," said Jessi Crast, researcher at Limeade.
Crast defines a caring culture as "providing organizational support for employee's social, physical, occupational, and emotional well-being." One way to achieve a caring culture is equipping managers with the right skills, like the ability to empathize with direct reports.
Other tips Crast recommends include fostering peer social networks, providing transparency from leadership, offering tools and resources, enabling two-way communication, and investing in employees' development.
Reposted from The New York Times
The Metropolitan Museum of Art said Tuesday that it would limit attendance to roughly 10,000 visitors per day because of the highly infectious Omicron variant. During a normal holiday season, the museum would expect nearly twice as many visitors.
“The safety of our staff and visitors remains our top priority,” the Met’s chief executive, Daniel H. Weiss, said in a statement. “Reduced density is a first step we can take — and our dedicated staff has done an extraordinary job in making necessary changes to adapt to our public health circumstances while also allowing the museum to remain open and keep everyone safe.”
The move came as another major institution, the Baltimore Museum of Art, said that it was closing its galleries through Dec. 29 because of an increase in positive coronavirus tests.
“We need a moment to step back and ensure our staff is ready to serve museum visitors,” the Baltimore museum said in an email on Tuesday. “We think cautiously is the best way to move forward.”
On Thursday, the Winter Show (a large art, antique and design fair) postponed its Jan. 20 opening at the Park Avenue Armory, with plans to announce new dates in the coming weeks. In Queens, the Noguchi Museum has closed through Jan. 4 because of the Omicron variant. And in New Haven, Conn., the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art have both closed through Jan. 2.
Kenneth Weine, the Met’s spokesman, said that reduced capacity would help limit density inside the building’s entrances. Outside the entrances, though, with staff members checking vaccination status of visitors, he said there could be longer lines. The Met will also end food services starting on Thursday and is asking many employees to work from home.
Reports of coronavirus cases in New York State have increased by more than 80 percent over two weeks, and federal authorities have said the Omicron variant now accounts for nearly three-quarters of new cases.
Cultural institutions have typically relied on the holidays to aid revenue. This latest coronavirus surge has led to the sudden cancellation of performances and special programming around the city. Over the weekend, nearly a third of all Broadway shows were canceled because of positive coronavirus tests among their casts and crews, and several are shut down through Christmas.
“The museum field is already facing a slow recovery,” said Laura Lott, president and chief executive of the American Alliance of Museums.
“Another wave of reduced capacity and potential closures, without further federal assistance, could prove devastating,” she added.
Museums are also implementing new safety measures. Both the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Brooklyn Museum, for example, have canceled many in-person tours.
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Reposted from US News & World Report
An information technology system security breach detected late last month prompted the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to shut down its website for a state investigation, the museum announced this week.
There’s no evidence that the breach is connected to the ransomware attack on Virginia legislative agencies’ IT systems, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Virginia State Police are investigating a ransomware attack on state legislative agencies, discovered late Sunday night.
There’s also no evidence that personal or financial information was accessed or compromised, spokeswoman Jan Hatchette said. The museum said it hopes to restore the website by the end of the week.
The museum, an independent agency of the state, said the Virginia Information Technologies Agency detected a compromise in the website in late November, along with “evidence indicating an existing security threat from an unauthorized third-party.”
Hatchette said the museum took the website offline while the breach is investigated, contained and the website's functionality is restored. A temporary website was put up “until the restoration is complete,” she said.
Reposted from Artnet News
Museums in Denmark and the Netherlands will close as part of new coronavirus lockdown measures being imposed in both countries in reaction to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the disease. The announcements have been met with resignation and disappointment as it will mean further strain on the already stretched museum sector after nearly two years of sporadic closures and reduced capacity.
Meanwhile, in London, the Natural History Museum has had to exceptionally close until December 27 due to an “unforeseen staff shortage caused by COVID-19” according to a statement on Twitter. It is not the only museum impacted by the crisis, as the Wellcome Collection and the Foundling Museum have also decided to close amid the virus surge, according to the Art Newspaper, although the U.K. government has not handed down any official instruction for museums to close.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced on the evening of Saturday December 18 that all non-essential shops, bars and restaurants would close until January 14. The ruling, put in place to protect the Dutch medical system, will mean museums will also close until mid-January, the logic being that this will give people time to get their vaccine booster.
“I stand here tonight in a sombre mood. And a lot of people watching will feel that way. To sum it up in one sentence, the Netherlands will go back into lockdown from tomorrow,” he told the Dutch people in an empathetic address, according to the BBC. “I can now hear the whole of the Netherlands sighing. This is exactly one week before Christmas, another Christmas that is completely different from what we would like.”
The latest lockdown measures mean that the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has been open for just 24 weeks in 2021. “Of course we had hoped that the situation would be different, as what we really want to do is to inspire our visitors with the life and work of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries on a daily basis,” director Emilie Gordenker told Artnet News. She added that the closure caused 12,000 ticket cancellations (tickets for the museum are priced at €19/$21).
The Dutch decision came after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen declared the closure of all public venues including amusement parks, theatre, cinemas, museums and art galleries until mid-January on Friday, December 17.
“Our goal is still to keep as large sections of society open as possible. We need to curb activity. We all need to limit our social contacts,” she said.
The announcements come as concern over the rapid spread and unknown long-term impact of the Omicron variant across the world. Austria has just emerged from its own circuit-breaker lockdown, which shuttered museums at a potential cost of “millions,” according to museum director Sabine Haag. In London Sadiq Khan announced a “major incident” while U.K. health secretary Sajid Javid refused to rule out introducing restrictions in the week leading up to Christmas. In the U.S., the president’s chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, has advised social distancing and the use of face masks in crowded places.
Reposted from Hyperallergic
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York will mandate COVID-19 booster shots for all staff amid an alarming surge of Omicron cases across the country. The museum will extend remote work through January 31 for some employees, but frontline workers in the retail, security, and visitor services departments will still be required to work on-site and will receive a daily bonus of $50, according to an internal email to staff obtained by Hyperallergic.
“As we prepare for the holidays and the weeks following, out of an abundance of caution, we’ve decided that MoMA employees who work at the Museum and QNS [MoMA’s library branch in Long Island City, New York] and who can carry out their job responsibilities while working remotely may, with permission from their managers, work from home beginning December 27, 2021 through January 31, 2022,” said an email sent by the museum’s Human Resources department on December 22. According to the email, all staff will return to on-site work on February 1.
The email goes on to announce that MoMA will be “expanding the requirement of being fully vaccinated to include a booster shot” within seven days of a worker’s eligibility to receive one (six months after Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and two months after a Johnson & Johnson vaccine). Workers who are eligible to receive a booster shot prior to January 31 must show evidence of having received the booster by that date. Those who will become eligible for the booster shot past the January 31 deadline must provide HR with the date of completion of their first two vaccine shots before the end of January and show proof of a booster jab within a week of their eligibility date.
COVID-19 cases in the state of New York have spiked over 80% in the last two weeks due to the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant. The number of reported cases in the past week was the highest since the beginning of the pandemic. Last week, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it has reduced its visitor capacity to 10,000 a day, slashing in half its average daily attendance during the holiday season, and suspended dining in its cafeteria to contain the risk of infection. Prior to that, the Metropolitan Opera became the first NYC institution to require proof of a booster shot from its staff, performers, and audiences.
In an email to Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for MoMA confirmed the new safety measures, saying they were based on New York City’s Key to NYC COVID-19 vaccination mandate for businesses, which requires all staff to show proof of at least one vaccine dose starting today, December 27 (workers will have 45 days to show proof of their second dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines; they are still not required to show proof of a booster shot).
“Since our reopening to the public in August 2020, we have required face coverings for all staff and visitors ages 2+ in all indoor areas of the Museum campus,” the spokesperson added, also noting that the museum’s daily capacity remains restricted to below 10,000 visitors.
A MoMA worker in a public-facing position who spoke with Hyperallergic on condition of anonymity criticized the new safety guidelines as insufficient, accusing the museum of pursuing a policy of “sticks and carrots.”
The worker noted that the museum had paid frontline workers the same $50 daily bonus at an earlier stage of the pandemic but has since stopped “although things were still bad.”
The worker, who says they recently recovered from COVID-19, accused the museum of failing to safely address an alleged surge of infections among staff.
“I informed HR that I tested positive for COVID and that I was experiencing symptoms during work but they never sent out an email warning other workers with whom I came in contact,” the worker claimed. “I personally informed them that I tested positive and encouraged them to get tested.” MoMA did not respond to these allegations.
When asked how the museum could better address his safety concerns, the worker said that MoMA should follow the Met’s example and cut down attendance to “prevent bottlenecks and allow for more social distancing.”
“I would expect the museum to just slow down a little bit and take density out of the equation, but I guess they don’t want to lose money.”
“The health and safety of our staff and public remain MoMA’s top priority,” the museum’s spokesperson said in response. “We work closely with health experts and government officials to stay on top of the latest COVID-19 information and stay vigilant in our efforts to protect the health and safety of all.”
How’s this for an early Christmas present? As the sudden surge of the Omicron variant leaves the world reeling, the U.K.’s department for digital, culture, media, and sport is doubling its current round of emergency funding for the arts to £60 million ($80.4 million).
“We understand how devastating the uncertainty caused by Omicron has been. This new funding… will support the sector as we together face this difficult time,” Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the exchequer who approved the funding, said in a statement. “We’ve supported the cultural sector throughout the pandemic, and we’ll continue to do so.”
Now, an additional £30 million ($40 million) is available to museums, cinemas, theaters, and heritage sites across the country through Arts Council England. The government has also extended the deadline to apply for the aid by an extra week, to January 18, 2022. Grants range from £25,000 ($33,500) to £3 million ($3.9 million), with limits for organizations that have already received funding in earlier rounds.
The funding is part of a larger £1 billion ($1.3 billion) support package previously greenlit by Sunak, which also includes £1.5 million ($2 million) earmarked for creative freelancers impacted by the pandemic. The nonprofit Theatre Artists Fund and Help Musicians will each distribute £650,000 ($87,000) directly to freelancers, while the Artists Information Company, a charity for visual artists, will hand out £200,000 ($260,000).
“Christmas is a very important time of year for so many of our brilliant arts and culture organizations who have now found themselves impacted by the Omicron variant,” culture secretary Nadine Dorries said in a statement. “It is absolutely right that we support them through this challenging time, which is why we’ve doubled the emergency funding available from the Culture Recovery Fund.”
The government first issued emergency cultural funding in July 2020, with a £1.57 billion ($1.9 billion) bailout for the struggling sector. An additional £76 million ($98 million) followed in the fall, and £485.8 million (around $677 million) this spring.
So far, the Culture Recovery Fund has distributed more than £1.5 billion ($2 billion) to around 5,000 organizations nationwide. The most recent round of funding went out in November, with £100 million ($134.5 million) split between close to 1,000 cultural organizations, including the Leeds Grand Theatre and Opera House and the London Transport Museum.
Reposted from AAM
Over the course of its distinguished 120-year history of art education, the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) has offered classes that extend beyond simple drawing and painting into topics ranging from shop window design to robotics. As unusual as this territory may seem for an art museum, it is part of an underlying understanding: that the concepts of art history and art education can be applied to the world in practical ways.
This notion has become an increasing focus for TMA’s operations in recent years, through a collaboration between the museum’s Deputy Director (now Director) and a retired senior corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company. Working together, we have discovered an unexpected application of visual literacy that has grown over the past three years into a business that is both profitable for the museum and life-saving for the people who participate.
Even though Owens Corning, a Toledo-based manufacturer of building materials, won recognition for its accomplishments in safety—including the Green Cross, the highest honor bestowed by the National Safety Council—it still saw injuries at the workplace, like almost all companies in every industry do. Over the past few decades, companies have made huge strides in engineering their environments to be safer, but when injuries do happen, a shockingly common refrain has been and continues to be: “I walked past that hazard every day, and I just didn’t see it.” People were getting hurt because they could not see what was right in front of them.
This problem inspired Doug Pontsler, then the Vice President of Operations Sustainability and Environmental, Health, at Owens Corning and Adam Levine, then the Deputy Director at TMA, to ask a question: Could we harness applied art history to make people safer? The answer, it turns out, is a resounding yes. We learned that if you can teach employees to look at their workstations the same way an art historian looks at a painting, they spot more hazards. As a result, incident rates decrease, employees are safer, worker’s compensation claims go down, and companies save money.
Since we founded the Center of Visual Expertise (COVE) three years ago, COVE has established a thought leadership position in the EHS field and counts numerous Fortune 500 companies among its clients. COVE generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, allowing us to metabolize the considerable start-up costs of a services business. This past year, in the face of a global pandemic, COVE turned its first profit. But more important than COVE’s thought leadership or economic contribution is its demonstration of the social value that museums can have, as it uses art history to save lives and livelihoods.
At COVE, we train workers in applying visual literacy, a fluency with visual cues, which is a crucial skill in every field. Participants join instructor-led workshops, which are primarily conducted live and leverage TMA’s collection in order to share visual language lessons. During the COVID pandemic, we pivoted to offering virtual workshops, which offer a different participant experience but, we have found, the same learning outcomes.
The flagship Foundations of Visual Literacy workshop is two days in length and focuses on what visual literacy is, why it matters to us as individuals, and how it improves our ability to live and work safely. The content is a combination of classroom teaching and experiential learning through group work and exercises. COVE offers open workshops for multiple-company participation and dedicated workshops for single-company participation. It also offers a license model that includes a train-the-trainer program. Through workshop revenue and license fees, COVE was imagined as, and has become, a revenue source supporting museum programs and education activities.
The workshops have confirmed our belief that visual literacy as a form of critical thinking can be exercised beyond traditional audiences and applications. The positive feedback from participating companies, as they learn how something from art education can improve safety, has demonstrated that the museum can be relevant to industry in a new and different way, enabling further engagement and expanded opportunities for patronage.
As museums seek to create sustainable business models, finding ways to leverage their expertise can provide an important contribution to their earned income potential. But despite some notable exceptions, museums are not particularly experienced as incubators of early-stage ventures, and starting any business requires capital and a tolerance for risk. TMA got comfortable with this risk and the start-up investment by validating the existence of a market before ever launching COVE. Through a two-year collaboration with Doug and Owens Corning, TMA was effectively able to do all our “research and development” work with a partner committed to saving lives but also committed to supporting the museum.
COVE was imagined and treated as a separate entity from the outset. TMA maintained some governance oversight through an advisory board, which the director chairs, but COVE was left to manage itself as a business, not as a department of the museum.
Though TMA is hardly the first museum to start a business, a business focused on industrial hygiene may seem on the surface as far removed from a museum’s core operations as can be. However, we’ve found that forming a connection to this industry has been an invaluable asset, particularly during this global pandemic. Doug generously agreed to sit on the museum’s COVID task force, providing TMA with surely one of the most qualified experts to offer safety guidance in our entire sector. Whether a museum starts a business or not, our experience with COVE reminds us how much we can learn from organizations outside the arts and culture space.
Growing a business within a museum is not for the faint of heart, but the process can be de-risked, and the benefits to a museum, its culture, and to the world beyond the arts can be significant.
Reposted from Museums Association
The museum sector is facing a “moment of great vulnerability” as Covid restrictions tighten again without previous financial support measures in place.
New “Plan B” regulations were announced in England this week to slow the spread of the Omicron variant, while the devolved governments have refused to rule out further restrictions in the weeks ahead if cases surge as predicted.
“New Covid restrictions in England and lower visitor confidence across the UK mean that this will be another very challenging winter for museums,” said MA policy manager Alistair Brown. “This comes at a moment of great vulnerability for the sector – when furlough has ended and emergency funding is coming to an end, but without a return to normal business conditions.
“The MA has spoken with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and devolved governments this week about our concerns and we will continue to make the case for appropriate support from government throughout the Covid crisis. We are also urging members to contact us with any concerns or new information about the impact of the latest wave of Covid so that we can advocate as effectively as possible on the sector’s behalf.”
Plan B measures in England include:
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already have the majority of restrictions introduced in England under Plan B.
In a briefing today, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was “virtually certain” that there would be a surge of cases in the coming weeks driven by the Omicron variant. She did not rule out bringing in further restrictions in response.
Currently, the Scottish Government is asking people to work from home where possible and has urged workers to postpone their office Christmas parties.
In addition to restrictions already in place in Wales, the Welsh Government is “strongly advising” people to take a lateral flow test before going out, and to wear face coverings in hospitality settings when they’re not eating or drinking.
The top medical advisors to the Northern Ireland Executive have also not ruled out further measures to slow the spread of the virus, saying restrictions such as social distancing may need to be reintroduced in January.
Emergency funding The latest round of the Arts Council England Culture Recovery Fund supports cultural organisations in England that were financially sustainable before Covid-19 but are now at imminent risk of failure and have exhausted all other options for increasing their resilience. This is a rolling programme and applications can be submitted until 28 January 2022. Decisions will be communicated within six weeks, where possible. Apply via the Arts Council England website. The Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage – Emergency Resource Support, run by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), is open until 11 January. It supports heritage organisations and businesses in England at imminent risk of failure. Apply via the NLHF website.
The latest round of the Arts Council England Culture Recovery Fund supports cultural organisations in England that were financially sustainable before Covid-19 but are now at imminent risk of failure and have exhausted all other options for increasing their resilience.
This is a rolling programme and applications can be submitted until 28 January 2022. Decisions will be communicated within six weeks, where possible.
Apply via the Arts Council England website.
The Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage – Emergency Resource Support, run by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), is open until 11 January. It supports heritage organisations and businesses in England at imminent risk of failure.
Apply via the NLHF website.
Reposted from NPR
Thomas Gavin may be one of the most prolific artifact thieves in U.S. history.
There are no movies or books about him, and no wild police chases or Indiana Jones-like adventures. In fact, until a couple of years ago no one even knew who he was.
But Gavin had been on a tear in the '60s and '70s, hitting nearly a dozen museums on the East Coast. He mostly stole antique firearms and stashed them in his hideout — a cluttered, non-descript barn in rural Pennsylvania.
Gavin's crime spree was so under the radar, no one caught on until 2018, when he tried to unload a rare, Revolutionary-era rifle to a local antiques dealer.
At first, Kelly Kinzle didn't know what he was looking at.
"I looked at it and I said, 'Well, this is a copy of a famous rifle,' " Kinzle recalls. "I said, 'This isn't the original — has to be a copy.' And he didn't say anything, didn't correct me, and I bought it literally for a copy of a famous gun."
But when Kinzle brought it home, he still had a feeling that bothered him and kept looking at the gun.
"I took it apart and when I took it apart. It was period. It was correct. I went to a reference book — I had bought an old out-of-print book — and I flipped through it and I found a photograph of the gun," he says. "And under the photograph, the caption was: 'Stolen from the Valley Forge Historical Society in 1970.' "
It wasn't just any old gun, but one of the few surviving rifles made by master gunsmith John Christian Oerter.
The copy Kinzle thought he bought for $4,000 was actually valued at $175,000.
The FBI, of course, was looking for the rifle. And when they questioned Gavin about how he got it, the long jig was up. That was in 2019, and now finally the saga has made its way to the courts and a ruling.
It's unclear how many items the now 78-year-old Gavin pilfered. It's been so long that a lot of the places he claimed to hit don't exist anymore, or they don't have a record of the thefts. And most of the statutes of limitations on the items he stole have expired.
In court last week, Gavin pleaded guilty to one count of disposal of an object of cultural heritage stolen from a museum. The judge took Gavin's age and declining health into consideration and, incredibly, sentenced Gavin to one day in prison for decades of theft.
Still, Kinzle, who spent a lot of his own money to help solve this crime, isn't upset with Gavin's light sentence.
"I think he's trying to do the right thing now and and get some of these things back," Kinzle says. "Or at least, you know, nobody's ever going to be made whole.
"Personally, I wish I never got the call and never had to be involved in this. But you know, I think in the end, we're all going to come out better for it."
And as for the rifle? It's now on display the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, where it's on loan from the Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution.
There are a near-record 10.5 million job vacancies in the United States, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The hiring crunch has left the upper echelons of the art world empty, with almost two dozen openings for what may be the most coveted role in the cultural sector: museum director.
The openings are the product of a perfect storm. There’s a generational shift among leaders sparking a wave of retirements, while controversies, pandemic-induced budget shortfalls, and demands for increased DEAI engagement are pushing other leaders out the door. According to an analysis by Artnet News, no fewer than 22 director positions are currently open at important art institutions across the country.
The organizations seeking new leadership range from some of the country’s largest and wealthiest, like the J. Getty Paul Getty Trust, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to smaller ones that serve as pillars for their local communities, such as the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.
“There is a tremendous amount of leadership transition underway,” said Bruce Thibodeau, president of the Arts Consulting Group, which is currently helping PlayPenn, a Philadelphia incubator for playwrights, find a new artistic director. Many executives who had planned to retire in early 2020 delayed their departures because of the pandemic, he said, but are now leaving their posts alongside those who had originally planned to depart this year. Both groups are “making their transitions simultaneously, which is creating more vacancies than normal.”
The question now is whether there are enough qualified—and, perhaps more importantly, interested—candidates to fill these roles at a time when the job of museum director is considerably less desirable than it used to be.
“People really don’t want to be directors right now because the jobs are emotionally unsustainable and it’s a challenge to navigate the wealth gap between low-paid staff and wealthy trustees,” said Laura Raicovich, a museum executive who recently published a book on the political and economic challenges facing art institutions today.
Oftentimes, the public reads organizational failings as a reflection of bad management. Some museum directors said this leaves them feeling like lightning rods responsible for absorbing shock while the trustees escape scrutiny—despite having the final say in major decisions like acquisitions, workplace policies, and building expansions.
The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York is on its second interim director after ousting Caroline Baumann from its top position last year. The Smithsonian had launched an investigation into potential problems regarding the procurement of a dress and venue for Baumann’s 2018 wedding. Two people close to the inquiry told the New York Times that the investigation turned up evidence of an apparent conflict of interest. Baumann has since rejected the investigation’s findings, calling it a “sham report.”
Newfields in Indiana has had an interim president for nearly nine months since its former leader, Charles Venable, resigned after he was criticized for a job posting that described the museum’s core audience as “white.” Around the same time, SFMOMA’s director Neal Benezra announced that he would be stepping down after the institution completed a major expansion in 2016 and, more recently, faced criticism for its response to George Floyd’s murder and alleged censorship of Black employees. The directors of Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University also left in response to complaints from staff about abusive work environments.
While such controversies can reflect the harsh management philosophies of directors, there is a growing awareness of the pressures directors are under from their boards. Museum experts said that the three-way relationship between staff, leaders, and trustees is more complex than it appears—and contributes to the challenge of the director role.
ere are a near-record 10.5 million job vacancies in the United States, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The hiring crunch has left the upper echelons of the art world empty, with almost two dozen openings for what may be the most coveted role in the cultural sector: museum director.
“The director serves at the pleasure of the board and there is always a complicated relationship in having to be the visionary who is inspiring trustees but at the same time reporting to them,” said Raicovich, who attributed difficulties to the growing wealth gaps between wealthy board members and everyone else. “I know very few directors who don’t deeply empathize with their staff.”
Over the summer, Timothy Rub, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s director and chief executive officer, announced his plan to retire after 13 years in 2022. More than a year ago, Gail Harrity, who joined the museum in 1997 and became its president and chief operating officer, announced her departure; her role remains unfilled.
While experts say it is not unusual for museum leadership to turn over after the completion of a major capital campaign, the PMA also experienced a turbulent year of employees alleging sexual and physical misconduct against former managers as well as a financial squeeze wrought by the pandemic that resulted in 85 layoffs and more than 40 buyouts.
Philadelphia, a city that has seen leadership turnover at nearly every one of its major cultural organizations over the past year, serves as a valuable case study for what happens when executive turnover meets the financial challenges of the pandemic. “Philadelphia may be the canary in the coal mine,” Raicovich said.
Public spending for the arts was one of the first things to go when the city was facing an estimated $749 million budget shortfall last year. Allocations for the arts through the Philadelphia Culture Fund decreased from more than $3 million to $1 million after cuts, reducing the amount of organizations that received support by nearly 40 percent, according to the city.
In addition to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts lost its museum director, Brooke Davis Anderson, who went to lead a philanthropic fund based in New York. The academy is also searching for a president and chief executive officer.
“Sometimes individuals determine that their future lies elsewhere,” said Priscilla Luce, interim head of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, which also happens to be searching for its next leader. “I certainly think the stress and strain of Covid-19 has added to the equation.”
But a spate of new hires in Philadelphia also offers a glimpse at what the future of the sector might look like. After a lengthy recruitment process, the African American Museum recently announced that Ashley Jordan, previously an executive with the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, would become its next president and chief executive.
“There is great opportunity for the next generation of Philadelphia’s museum directors as art history evolves and the status quo is challenged,” said Jordan, who, at 37, belongs to the city’s new cohort of young leaders. Last year, Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art hired Zoë Ryan as its new director; in 2019, the Fabric Workshop & Museum tapped Christina Vassallo, 41, to lead the organization.
Both within Philadelphia and elsewhere in the U.S., the majority of museums that have completed their executive searches over the past year have chosen women and BIPOC candidates to lead their organizations. That includes institutions like the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, the Bronx Museum in New York, and the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri.
“Directors now have the chance to ask boards about how willing they are to rethink their strategy, especially in the areas of diversity and inclusion,” said Jane Hsu, an associate vice president at the Arts Consulting Group. “Nobody wants to step into a position and realize there is a major issue.”
If the trio of new directors in Philadelphia is any indication, the future of museums will be more digital and more collaborative than ever before. All three women are now embarking on projects aimed at expanding their museums online after the pandemic tanked their attendance figures. Their institutions recently received a combined $856,200 in grants from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage meant to help reshape business and revenue models.
The African American Museum’s $256,200 grant will fund two new staff positions responsible for bringing the nonprofit’s exhibitions and programming online. “Young leaders want to help their museums move forward,” Jordan explained. “I’m already feeling a great synergy among us directors in the city of brotherly love.”
The directors have also formed a consortium that helps arts leaders from across the city collaborate. The group has experimented with joint fundraising and programming; it’s now focused on improving communication among institutions and challenging “the values underlying what museums do, who they serve, and how they function,” according to its website.
For now, executive recruiters say that prospective museum directors have the upper hand in negotiations. That type of leverage gives new leaders a chance to challenge board directors and other structural barriers that might have hampered their predecessors.
“It’s a job seeker’s market,” said Hsu, the arts consultant. “You could get some great finalists for a museum job, but maybe they are candidates for multiple other positions.”
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