Remuseum

We've built the first non-proprietary database on major U.S. art museums, and we're sharing some counterintuitive findings in a report next week. Sign up for Remuseum's news feed to see the report when it comes out on March 20: https://eepurl.com/iPH_OQ

Alternative and untapped capital sources may quickly become essential to museums as the broader funding landscape shifts. Join our free webinar to hear ideas and learn about options from experts. We'll be joined by Stephanie Shapiro at Environment & Culture Partners, Anna Raginskaya at Blue Rider Group, and David Sand at Community Capital Management, LLC. Register here: https://lnkd.in/euSCDj8Q

Relevance requires trust, and we love this exciting example of a museum trusting the public enough to be its partner in the way it exhibits art. Congratulations to Masha Turchinsky and Hudson River Museum for a creative use of support from Art Bridges Foundation and art shared by the Joslyn Art Museum. You don't need a survey to know that the public would appreciate more ways to see museums listen to them AND respond in real time.

Join me for another Remuseum webinar - this one exploring the overlooked sources of capital and revenue for museums. I'm excited to be joined by Stephanie Shapiro, Anna Raginskaya, and David Sand. Useful to museum leaders and boards, but free and open to all. Register here: https://lnkd.in/euSCDj8Q

Join me for another Remuseum webinar - this one exploring the overlooked sources of capital and revenue for museums. I'm excited to be joined by Stephanie Shapiro, Anna Raginskaya, and David Sand. Useful to museum leaders and boards, but free and open to all. Register here: https://lnkd.in/euSCDj8Q

A museum director recently told me that his board asked him to stop saying the word "permanent' when referring to their museum's permanent collection. Permanence has a nice sound to it, but museums and arts organizations may may find that impermanence offers its own set of benefits. Daniel Grant wrote this great piece for the Observer about the benefits of temporary installations in public art, including: lower costs, greater public attention and tolerance, and more opportunity for artists.?Read it and think about ways that your own work might benefit from a little more impermanence.?

Thanks Adam Rozan and American Alliance of Museums for this interview with Remuseum's Founding Director, Stephen Reily. In the long run, museums will thrive if they stay focused on the public they serve.

This article in the Observer tackles an interesting story, but it uses the wrong museum to illustrate and launch the piece. The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art has not closed; it has only closed its building, launching an ambitious venture of fulfilling its mission of sharing Himalayan art with the public without first requiring them to come to New York City’s 17th?St. to do so. In a short period since announcing its decision last year the Rubin has (among other things) presented its immersive “Mandala Lab” in Bilbao and Milan; loaned its Buddhist Shrine Room to the Brooklyn Museum and its 650,000 annual visitors; launched a collection tour to other museums in Utah, Minnesota, Oregon and California; and initiated an annual prize to artists inspired by Himalayan art forms and techniques. The article states the Rubin’s?building?“represented a large financial drain on the museum’s overall resources,” which is no surprise, since the same fact is true for every American art museum. What is surprising is that we don’t see more museums explore ways to fulfill their missions without their financially and environmentally burdensome buildings.?After all, they aren’t required: The International Council of Museums (ICOM) definition of “museum” does not even include “building” in its 57 words. Museum buildings, which grow bigger and bigger, are beautiful things and offer sublime, educational, and social experiences with art. But they also present challenges, including??the financial and environmental cost of their upkeep (much of which is devoted to storing art the public doesn’t see) and the fact that the museum’s walls themselves become an obstacle to meeting people where they are. Striking the right balance presents more questions than answers, and we should celebrate when a single museum is willing to achieve a global mission with a global business model. Rather than “closing,” you might actually say that the Rubin – liberated from the museum building as its dominant tool of expression – has opened itself to the world. We should all be interested to see where it leads.

Sometimes museums go where their existing donors lead, and sometimes museums can chart a new direction and gain donor support for it. With inspiration from Art Bridges Foundation and others, the Whitney Museum of American Art is showing that donors (including one very generous artist, Julie Mehretu) are willing to support not just new buildings and collections but increased public access. Whitney Director Scott Rothkopf said it just right when he told reporter @Kelly Crow: “In any museum, you’re choosing what to spend money on—be it storage or loans or whatever—but getting more young people in here is the most meaningful thing I can think of to subsidize.”

Art museums are still a young and dynamic field, always changing: from royal collections to public goods, from clubhouses for the elite to engines of economic development. Now "palaces for the people," the primary goal of art museums is no longer built around preserving objects and assuming the public will be interested in them; it is now built around engaging the public in the process of finding meaning in art. It's a bold and exciting vision. But does the public feel that shift? Does the information that museums share with the public does reflect the trust or transparency that the public expects from institutions that earn its respect and loyalty? Do their budgets and practices (which museum boards and leaders endorse) represent mission-compliance, or mission neglect? Thanks to Observer for sharing Remuseum's research and questions for the field.