Edifice Complex and Museums

Here's a quick museum business quiz --- answer true or false.

1) A museum can be too big.

2) A museum can be totally"self-supporting" financially.

Depending on your answers to those questions, you may or may not believe that museums (especially in the U.S.) have a serious "edifice complex."

That is, the blind belief that somehow merely constructing a GIGANTIC building, funded through a combination of hopelessly over-optimistic attendance projections and/or slightly dubious loan arrangements, will create a successful, sustainable museum.

Part of what brings this all to mind is the sad and distressing news out of Miami, concerning the Frost Museum of Science — a signature project at the heart of the new Museum Park downtown that has run out of cash before construction can be finished.  The Frost is not merely a project "too big to fail" but "too big to finish."

In an eleventh hour move, the Frost project will be finished, but at a wrenching emotional price to the museum --- the museum's namesake funders — Phillip and Patricia Frost — announced that they're going to bail out the museum with a bridge loan to keep construction going. But they also exacted very tough terms: they’ve effectively “fired" the entire current 41-person board of the science museum.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose.  Full disclosure: I consulted on the Frost project up until late 2015 and I really admire the creative team there.  I sincerely hope they can move forward and open the museum in a positive and sustainable way.

Unfortunately, Miami's Frost Museum is hardly the exception to the museum edifice complex.  Here's a short list of news story links to ponder in a similar vein:


Newseum

Museum of Jewish Heritage

Exploratorium (here and here)

MOSI (Tampa)

Science City and Prariefire  (A geographically-related pairing in my view)

Please Touch Museum (here and here)

The National Children's Museum

Chattanooga History Museum

All museums with problems that could be reasonably tied to their (overly?) large new facilities or expansion plans.


I offer these links and examples not merely as a litany of pain, or a map to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, but as a plea to museum and civic leaders:  If you think it is difficult to build a new museum, it is much, much, much, more difficult to create a thriving and sustainable cultural institution that is responsive to the communities surrounding it.

Maybe there is something ingrained in the American psyche and in the mindset of wealthy philanthropists that prevents modest, truly sustainable projects from moving forward when more grandiose alternatives always seem to be waiting in the wings.

Before completely despairing for the museum business, I'll offer the example of COSI in Columbus, Ohio as an example of an institution saddled (for a variety of political reasons) with a new building that was too large and unsustainable from the day it opened in 1999, that has managed to claw its way back (over the past 16+ years!) through, for example, a variety of community partnerships that involved sharing and leasing unused space inside COSI.  (You can read more about COSI's institutional evolution here and here.)


Like most addictions, edifice complex is probably best kicked if it's never started in the first place, but, lacking that, I hope museums will continue to be smarter (and smaller!) with their facilities and financial projections in the future --- especially given the changing demographics and expectations of cultural consumers.




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Money, Politics, and Museums

The intertwined issues of money and politics are on full display with the U.S. Presidential Campaign in full swing.

I can't help seeing parallels to the issues being raised by the candidates, and the challenges of museums.

Starting with money, of course.  In both cases, one has to wonder if the needs and interests of the "people" (the vast majority of voters, in the case of political elections, along with visitors and most staff members, in the case of museums) are being swamped, if not completely lost, by the sway of big money donors and funders.  Recent revelations concerning the sway of funders in exhibitions that touched on issues of climate change are disappointing.  There is no such thing as a "neutral" exhibition, so why do museums continue to claim otherwise?

Fortunately, groups like The Natural History Museum are pushing museums to be more transparent and thoughtful in considering the implications of who their funders and trustees are.  


Wages and demographics are two related issues in the political process, but also in museum operations.  Politicians (and museums!) seem to have any number of excuses for not being able to pay some of their employees a living wage.  Lucky you if you work for a Wall Street firm or in the Development Department of a museum.  Too bad if you are a woman art museum director, or are part of the front line or education staff at most cultural institutions.

Again, groups like #MuseumWorkersSpeak and Museum Hue are bringing forward issues of inclusion and social justice in museums.

More than anything my takeaway from all this is to try to call out issues to be examined rather than hidden or "hushed up" in the museum community.  Kudos to museum organizations like NEMA who are building their conferences around such topics of common interest to museum workers.  I, and the general public, hold museums to high standards, and consider them highly trustworthy institutions.

But let's continue to earn that respect as a field by not falling victim to institutional laziness or craven pandering to funders.

Onward!





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Why Don't Museums Like To Talk About Money?

Conversations with colleagues (in North America, as well as Europe and Asia) had me thinking about some of the things we, as museum and design professionals, don't like to talk about.

But this recent open letter about some of this country's greatest science-based museums accepting money from the Koch family distributed by The Natural History Museum (that I'll characterize as an activist group working in the museum format) really made me wonder why folks attached to the museum field so dislike discussing money (and where and who our funding comes from.)

So let's talk a little about money.  Even after spending my entire professional life working in museums, I still can remember my immigrant paternal grandfather's bewilderment at my career choice.  "Why do you want to work in museums? Museums are for rich people!"  he would often say to me.  And despite the strides that museums have made over the past 30 years, deep down I think my Grandpa Orselli knew more than I gave him credit for.

One dirty little secret we don't like to share with the public is that there really is no such thing as a financially self-sustaining museum. Museums are a classic "bad business model."  So we try to make up for our constant money shortfalls by rattling our collective tin cups to shake down donors (both private and governmental) or pimping ourselves out with off-mission events and programs that, at times, barely separate our institutions from glorified catering halls.  How many times have museums put up with just downright crazy and seriously off-mission ideas from a donor (or even potential donor!) because we were so desperate for their money?

It's bad enough for an art museum like the Met to get into bed with corrosive robber barons like the Kochs, but when science museums(!) link up with the biggest funders of groups denying climate change science, something is seriously out of whack.

Well isn't that just a reality of the not-for-profit world of museums?  Since we rely on outside funders, can we afford (literally!) to upset our donors?  That, my friends, is part of the slimy, slippery slope of the museum world that even I wish we didn't have to acknowledge.  But the only way to change that stupid system is to acknowledge and discuss it, and drag it out into the harsh light of public scrutiny, instead of continuing to rationalize and avoid it.

So I say bravo to the folks behind The Natural History Museum! I hope your open letter upsets lots of people and makes taking money from dubious donors a topic for discussing and not dissembling.



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