Philippe de Montebello, the aristocratic former director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, once said, "I am the Met; the Met is me.” For over thirty years he was the highest profile museum professional in the United States. He poured his life into The Museum, as the Met is called, and the dynamic ways in which he developed its collections, exhibitions, and programming served as the primary model followed by the vast majority of other American museums. For our organization, AAMC, Mr. de Montebello’s greatest legacy is his enduring respect for curators (he was, after all, once one himself) and the tremendous resources he devoted to research and teaching at the Met, which has helped curators to gain recognition as important thinkers and to bridge the gap between curators and academics.

Although AAMC’s tenth annual meeting opened with its members giving Mr. de Montebello an award for distinguished service, the first session looked forward to the future rather than reflecting on the de Montebello years (even he seemed a bit tired of the endless accolades he has received since retiring two years ago). Presiding over the first session himself, Mr. de Montebello passed the baton to all the curators in the room as we collectively contemplated the question, "What is the Museum of 2021?” The discussion was led by a series of distinguished panelists who are all already seeking to shatter established museum paradigms with their work. Paola Antonelli, the design curator at the Museum of Modern Art who made headlines last year for audaciously adding the @ symbol to MoMA’s collection, envisioned a future in which museums would be "centers of R&D for society” and community-based rather than object-based. Linda Shearer then showed that at Project Row Houses in Houston, where she is director, those ideas are, in fact, already a reality—although not without Mr. de Montebello questioning whether the new institution could be considered a museum at all, given its lack of a permanent collection. Princeton philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah rounded out the panel and, with the aplomb of a seasoned diplomat at the United Nations, advocated for the idea that collections do not belong to the institutions that invest in and care for them but rather to the world, by which he meant that leading museums had an obligation to share their treasures not just with peer institutions and wealthy nations like Japan and Qatar that can pay multi-million-dollar loan fees, but also the Third World. Mr. de Montebello’s concluding statement—"bisogna cambiare tutto per non cambiare nienta” (everything must change so that nothing changes), taken from Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel Il Gattopardo (The Leopard)—served as a reminder that change is inevitable. For us this means that we must adapt if we are to survive in this new era in which even recent notions about the role of art museums in society are being revised. These ideas are being broadened because of globalization and shifts in population and power and fractured with the advent of new technologies. It is a testament to the vitality of the field that at the end of the session the room was not filled with melancholy for a world gone by, but rather energized and empowered by the opening up of a seemingly endless number of new possibilities. 

Trinita Kennedy

Associate Curator

Frist Center for the Visual Arts

Nashville

Award Presentation/Keynote

A Blog by Annemarie Sawkins

How fitting that Philippe de Montebello, director emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, received the AAMC’s newly created Award for Distinguished Service named in his honor and designed by Frank Stella, an icon of American art. Though never a curator himself―Philippe served as the director of Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts for four and half years before assuming the reins of the Metropolitan which he led not only ably but with distinction for 32 years―he understands museums. They are, after all, platforms for people and ideas, places where we care for, research and present objects precisely because of what they tell us about us.

            Philippe de Montebello was the ultimate director, because he was sensitive to curators and their needs not only in the museum and galleries, but in the wider world. He was gracious, for example, in accepting the AAMC’s invitation to speak at our 10^th Annual conference at which time he eloquently addressed the important role played by curators. 

            For those who love plays or masques and anti-masques in the tradition of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson, there is one here. In the fall of 2008, the curators of the Metropolitan accomplished two major feats. First they successfully planned a tribute exhibition, with over 300 major works acquired during de Montebello’s tenure, titled The Philippe de Montebello Years Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions, and they did it WITHOUT the director having any ideas of what was afoot. And just as curators wear many hats and play multiple roles, Philippe transitioned from award recipient to moderator without so much as a pause. Rather as he is want to do, he continues to champion a diversity of approaches and to stretch our minds by suggesting that "culture is more verbal than visual.”

            This idea served as the perfect transition to a panel titled Looking Forward Ten Years: What is the Museum of 2021? that could not have been more cleverly planned or wonderfully apropos.  In three very different talks the speakers―Paola Antonelli, Kwane Anthony Appiah and Linda Shearer―examined the role played by curators. Have you thought of yourself as a Geisha? Or the English Professor and bibliophile in Zorba the Greek who does not learn to live until he meets his antithesis? For some, curators are indeed like Geisha; entertainers, caretakers of people and objects, masters of the old, and by nature financial dependents. For Antonelli, true curators are highly conscious of the ambiguity of culture and the constant need to work with objects to ultimately deal with the issues of today. These, it was recognized by all, are expansive and include environmental responsibility (sustainability) and the sheer fact that because "history mirrors the present” our work is as vital as ever.

            Like Antonelli, Kwane Anthony Appiah turned to the past to address the topic of the panel, the museum of 2021. After reminding us of the role of museums in collecting objects, researching them and then sharing that information, he gave us an anecdote related to Jacob I Bernoulli’s 1684 discoveries related to probability theory. The idea here is that random variables and events, when repeated many times, exhibit certain patterns, which can be studied and predicted. His specific example was the 1635 expansion of British mail services from a strictly royal system to one that was more public. From this came conservations about logistics and new thoughts and approaches. For Appiah, the future of museums is tied to new media and the way of doing things now and in the future will be all about "access not ownership”.

            Closing out the panel was Linda Shearer, whose vast experiences include working at a variety of museums from alternative to established and from collecting to non-collecting. Shearer sees museums of all types including Project Row Houses, which she currently directs, as by necessity needing to "reflect community”. Increasing accessibility to objects, for Shearer, includes expanding the number and type of voices either commenting on an object, as in the Label Talk model, where three faculty write about the same object, or through the exchange of ideas. As models of interpretation of the past and of the future, the panelists made clear the primacy of our work in an ever changing landscape.

After attending the panel discussion "Collaborative Curating,” I have expanded my definitions of "creative” and "collaborative” in the museum context. Structured in a narrative based format, the panelists shared their collaborative projects ranging from a city-wide print mania celebration in Philadelphia to a hands-on project between a curator and a neuroscientist in hopes of exploring the sensory experience of handling objects. Don’t worry no one will be handing the real thing in the exhibition. Most interestingly, the projects discussed by the panelists were so innovative that had you walked blindly into the auditorium, you could have easily thought you were attending instead the panel entitled "Looking forward Ten Years: What is the Museum of 2021.” Shelley Langdale, Adriana Proser, Sarah Schroth, Joaneath Spicer, and Cynthia Burlington recounted a diversity of endeavors that shared a common theme—leverage relationships and partnerships in order to creatively engage and educate the visitor in innovative ways.

Some projects, such as Shelley Langdale’s Philagrafika 2010 involving countless Philadelphia institutions, were certainly beyond the scope of most small institutions, especially those with staff limitations. So as a curator who is also the collections manager, exhibition designer, preparator, registrar, and sometimes honorary member of other departments at HCF, I immediately recognized that these projects appeared beyond the scope of my institution. I even found myself asking myself how are these projects relevant to me, and then I had the "Aha moment.” That was not the point! I was being too self-focused and had to step back and ask instead--what was the central thread present in each of the talks. It all boiled down to the power of collective action and where that can take cultural institutions. I was certainly inspired, and although I may not have the opportunity to team up with a neuroscientist in the near future, I completely understand the need for stepping outside of our curatorial bubble and expanding what collaboration means. Partnership is clearly the most effective method of remaining relevant, leveraging increasingly diminished resources, and engaging a broader audience. So the type of "Collaborative Curating” espoused in this panel is indeed "looking forward ten years.”

Brandy S. Culp

Curator

Historic Charleston Foundation

"Collaborative Curating” at AAMC10 (May 16, 2011)

By John Zarobell, Assistant Curator of Collections, Exhibitions and Commissions, SFMOMA

Unlike many intellectual producers, the job of the curator is to collaborate with others in order to generate a project in public.  It is impossible to work alone, even to create a small, in-house exhibition, and indeed most projects curators are involved in—whether acquisitions, exhibitions, or collections care—require building a network of support and producing a consensus on how to move forward.  A synonym for curator could be negotiator.

Even so, many curators are not content simply to work with a team of professionals and supporters at their own museums, artists, dealers, and partner venues. Some want to extend their immersion into the world at large and engage with, among others, filmmakers, neuroscientists, and community groups.  Would any curator in her right mind take on the challenge of working with artists-as-curators, academic art historians-as-curators, and perhaps worst of all, an international and local team of arts organizations coordinating a city-wide print festival?  Apparently so.  Collaborating would appear to be, for some, a sort of addiction.  Too much is never enough.  Perhaps we are all enamored of listening to people tell us how to do what we do (and politely ignoring them).

Or, it could be that the cause lay elsewhere.  It could be, though I am not sure by any means, that curators—those arbiters of everything but especially taste—are not in fact the deciders (as W would have it) but they actually seek to empower others through their work.  There are as many ways to think of a curatorial project as there are curators, but a few categories might help here.  One means of collaborating is to bring others in to a project one does at the museum (or with other museums); another is to work with outsiders on a project that can be seen both at the museum and in another form; and a third is to use a curatorial project to shine a spotlight on the actions of others outside of the museum.  Among the five panelists at the "Collaborative Curating” panel, Cindy Burlingham, (Deputy Director of Collections, Hammer Museum and Director, Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts) and Sarah Schroth (Nancy Hanks Senior Curator, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University) would fit into the first group, Adriana Proser (John H. Foster Curator for Traditional Asian Art, Asia Society Museum) and Joneath Spicer (James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art, The Walters Art Museum) exemplify the second category, and Shelley Langdale’s (Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Philadelphia Museum of Art) involvement with Philagraphika would seem to be a means of extending beyond the institution while still working within it.

Burlingham and Schroth discussed their projects at the Hammer Museum and the Nasher Center at Duke University, respectively.  Burlingham worked to organize an exhibition of Charles Burchfield’s watercolors (Heatwaves in a Swamp, 2009) with the artist Robert Gober acting as a co-curator while Schroth worked with the art historian Mark Antliff as co-curator (as well as Vivien Greene) on The Vorticists exhibition (2010).  In the presentations of Schroth and Burlingham, the audience learned how extending beyond the pool of experienced curators transformed and enhanced their exhibition projects in their respective institutions and the other venues where these shows were viewed.

 Adriana Proser discussed her collaboration with filmmaker David Grubin which extended her Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art exhibition (Asia Society, 2010) into another domain, the PBS documentary.  While Proser was careful to qualify her successes, it is clear that the great benefits to her project were 1) the huge grant from the NEH that allowed for the film and the development of her show; 2) the opportunity to work with a producer outside of the museum context to leverage greater potential for the project research and to develop a larger audience base as a result of heightened exposure.  Spicer’s exhibition project (Touch and the Enjoyment of Sculpture: Exploring the Appeal of Renaissance Statuettes, 2011) involved working with a neuroscientist from Johns Hopkins in order to develop a beneficial collaboration between the domains of art and science.  Further, she sought to extend the examination of Renaissance statuettes in the collection of the Walters Art Museum.  By working with a specialist in the psychology of perception and presenting results in an interdisciplinary symposium, Spicer’s own research on the Walters’ collection was enriched and expanded.

Langdale’s collaboration with Philagraphika (2010) resulted in a curated exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art but it truly extended her curatorial reach beyond the museum and into the city at large.  Langdale struggled to convey the size and complexity of Philagraphika during her ten-minute presentation but it was clear that the project had a lot of moving parts and that Langdale, as a member of the collective curatorial committee led by José Roca, participated in a city-wide art exhibition/festival that included some 90 institutions and over 400 artists.  To my mind, it is here one comes to the core of collaboration because there is no way that the particular perspective of an individual curator can withstand in such an instance.  In this context, a curator can only participate, not determine, and the result is that the activity of the curator becomes part of a collective, not owned by the individual or the institution for which she works.  This kind of generosity is never reimbursed, but when a curator can use their skills and connections to mobilize something much bigger than herself—and literally beyond her control—the curator realizes most fully the public dimension of her role.

What I took away from the panel is that there are many ways to collaborate but each one pays dividends to the curator who is willing to extend her reach beyond the walls of the museum and engage the world at large. Collaboration is both the implicit nature of our work and its greatest potential.

Collaborative Curating

The thought of collaborating in a museum field that already has its fair share of stresses and deadlines, brings me back to the days of group projects in high school. Even now, collaborating seems like a daunting task.

The panel discussion began with moderator Cynthia Burlingham, Deputy Director of Collections at the Hammer Museum and Director at the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, who discussed a collaboration with the artist Robert Gober, who co-curated a retrospective of works by Charles Burchfield. This notion of inviting an artist to make connections to another artist’s works sounded fabulous, even if it wasn’t clear as to why Gober was the particular artist-curator selected for this exhibition. I suppose that is a task for me to research on my own.

The discussion continued with similar presentations and slide images of the curatorial installations, starting with Shelley R. Langdale, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the city-wide recurring event, Philagrafika. My impression of this collaborative project was an overall sense of intrigue and amazement – how is this project possible; what is the time frame to make something like this happen; how is this funded; what curators have the time to organize a city-wide event; etc., etc. Certainly I would not be able to, even as a part of a group of several curators, create a recurring, multi-collaborative, city-wide event on top of the daily curatorial needs of my institution. And then I discovered that an outside project manager oversees the project, and it all made a bit more sense. Still, the amount of community involvement given towards this one project is something for every city to strive towards.

Adriana Proser, John H. Foster Curator for Traditional Asian Art at the Asia Society Museum, presented her collaboration with the PBS filmmaker, David Grubin. My initial sense was that the project seemed more like good-luck and good-timing than a collaborative effort. These two separate entities happened to be working on a similar subject matter, the Buddha, at the same time. Although impressive, the overall scale of this project and the $1 million funding budget from the NEH, made the project appear somewhat out of reach for me and my institution. And again, I was back to feeling like collaborative curating was a daunting task.

The final two panel presentations by Sarah Schroth, Nancy Hanks Senior Curator at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and Joaneath Spicer, James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art at The Walters Art Museum brought me out of my self-doubt and feelings of daunt, even though the scale of their projects again sounded improbable at my institution. Schroth discussed a collaborative effort with museums overseas (the Guggenheim in Venice and the Tate, London), but she also worked with faculty members at Duke University to create a greater understanding of the overall exhibition on the Vorticists. Similarly, Spicer worked with a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University to create a greater understanding of her exhibition on touch. These were the collaborative projects that seem the most possible for me – the idea of working with local artists and academic faculty, to not only create a better understanding of art, but to also establish a stronger bond with the community. It dawned on me, and was stated several times throughout the conference, that this sense of community involvement and ownership is the key to the future success of museums.

Overall, collaborative projects still seem daunting, but this panel presented collaborative efforts involving a wide range of participants, making collaborative curating seem somewhat less complicated.

Natalie A. Mault

Curator, LSU Museum of Art

Lauren Rabb, Curator

University of Arizona Museum of Art

The session on objects conservation led by Ian Wardropper and Jack Soultanian at the Met was a terrific treat. This is how it worked:

Mr. Wardropper would first introduce a work from its art historical angle. For exampple, about the over-life-sized marble Perseus with the Head of Medusa by Antonio Canova that visually anchors the Petrie Sculpture Court, we learned, among other interesting things, that it is a second version of the composition, made on commission; that Canova prepared his work with a full-scale clay model; that his assistants and pupils did the rough carving but that, as stipulated in the contract, he personally finished the figure, especially the "important” parts (e.g. the heads) and most delicate details; and that his delivery included a second Medusa head, made of plaster, in case a problem would arise with the heavy marble hanging off the figure’s outstretched arm. (Amazingly, the plaster head still exists and was there for us to see).

Then Mr. Soultanian would describe the things he has to consider when beginning the conservation or cleaning of a marble. Regardign Perseus, it was imposrtant to know that Canova always toned his marbles to a warm, almost ivory shade, perhaps to make them look more like antiquities. This fact ruled out the use of poultices, the most effective and simple (?) treatment for removing ingrained dirt from stone, as they would also have leeched out the intended coloring. Instead, Mr. Soultanian employed erasers and saliva (did he really say that??), on a job that took three months to complete.

In this way, alternating between two strands of narrative, our group walked through the gallery and considered sculptures by different artists, in different styles, and with different conservation problems and their solutions. To me – neither a sculpture specialist nor a conservator – this exercise in seeing a sculpture as both historical artifact and material object was exciting. Never had the works been so rich. 

Claire Schneider, Independent Curator

The panel Innovative Conservation considered the ways technology is helping conservation and is itself challenged by it. Margaret Holben Ellis, a conservation professor at the Institute at NYU discussed the way controlled and repeated use of raking light photography can give in-depth information for works on paper. Lee Ann Daffner, a photo conservator at MoMA discussed an integrated team approach to conserving photographs that centers around a much more through documentation of the object itself, including raking light photographs, paper investigation, and makings notation. Significant energy is spent on recording the state of an object that is so fugitive before (or after) it changes.

Of most interest to me as a contemporary curator was the presentation on new media. Joanna Phillips, a new media conservator at the Guggenheim, gave a through and informative talk on how to best care for works in video, film, and slide projects/installations. Having worked with this information five years ago at the Albright-Knox Knox Art when it was just being created, I was eager to hear this presentation.

As is now common with conserving contemporary works of art, it is documenting the best "identity” of a work rather than a sense of absolute originality. How does one preserve the experience of walking into a Lucas Samaras room rather than necessarily the original glass. Expensive questionnaires filled out by the museum staff in tandem with the artist play a big part in this. For example, what makes one installation better than the next of the same work of art helps to understand the artist’s decision making. One must also decide what type of equipment is needed from non-dedicated (projector or monitor that can be used with many different works) and dedicated (equipment that is unique and irreplaceable—like slide projectors) to obsolete (box televisions). Of course, technology is always changing, so understanding and keeping on top of this when something goes from being non-dedicated to obsolete is key. I also appreciated the simple reminder to view the DVD or new media piece when it arrives, as no one in the copy chain probably has.

What was not discussed and was outside of the preview of the panel, but deserves a possible panel itself, is now to integrate the best practices in the field at museums with limited resources. At the Guggenheim, the Tate, or MoMA, they have dedicated conservators whose primary job is to care for just these matters. At much smaller institutions, this falls to a already over worked registrar and curator. In addition, finding the funds to pay for old soon-to-be-obsolete equipment and maintaining conversions of media are not as exciting as purchasing works of art. With a painting or sculpture, the conservation funds are also hard to find, but with media there is a much smaller window of opportunity. I have thought of ideas to help institutionalize such needs, such a creating a small endowment for media conservation that is instituted with each purchase as part of the each objects "purchase price.” I would love to hear what other colleagues have done with regards to tackling challenges in museums that do not have dedicated staff to handle all of the museum’s responsibilities. How are smaller museums creating the best practices in the field without a full time editor, conservator, development team, etc? How have they adapted the best practices in the field or innovated from where they stand.

By

Sarah Eckhardt

Nick Honeysett opened his panel presentation to laughter with a graph of the Gartner Hype Cycle. It included the Peak of Inflated Expectations, followed by the Trough of Disillusionment, soon to be replaced (hopefully) by the Slope of Enlightenment before the new "hyped” technology under consideration finally achieves the ultimate Plateau of Productivity.  The audience’s audible response seemed to indicate a mutual recognition of the familiar chimera of technological promises.  Yet, as Nick pointed out, the question remained as to where precisely museums currently fall on the hype cycle in regard to their online publishing expectations and practices. As the presentations proceeded, it became clear to me that the imagined point each person placed on the hype graph most likely had to do with their individual attachment to what Nick termed the Thwack or Thump Factor. An onomatopoeia reference to the physicality of a book’s presence, the Thump Factor encapsulates what Kwame Anthony Appiah admitted in an earlier panel was a fetish for the "aura of the object.” For most curators, the working assumption seemed to be, a book seems "real” whereas websites and online publications somehow seem nebulous and temporary. For example, Rui Guerra showed a chart mapping the point at which online visitors to the Tate Museums thoroughly outnumbered offline visitors. As the "online visitors” graph line shot high above the "offline visitors” someone behind me whispered, "Is that supposed to be a good thing?” That depends on the museum website. As Rui pointed out, these groups don’t necessarily compete with each other. Online visitors may be accessing the site from across the globe while "offline” visitors may have been drawn by an engrossing website experience. For both Rui and Nick, however, the key paradigm shift for cultural organizations involves acknowledging the website as a platform in and of itself and based on the needs of its online users, rather than treating a website as a mere virtual reflection of or advertisement for the architectural site. Both Nick and Rui emphasized that a traditional publication provides static information while an online site provides the opportunity to capitalize on one of the web’s primary advantages: the ability to open a dialogue with an audience and adapt fluidly as the context changes. Rui suggested combining dynamic, changing information, such as press releases and events with seemingly static information such as collections database materials like object descriptions and images, while also providing a set of related links to social network media such as Facebook, Youtube, and Flickr. Suffice it to say, a PDF version of a hardbound book is not the kind of online publication he or Nick are talking about. 

            On the flipside, Ed Marquand had been assigned the task of defending the book. As he duly noted, he didn’t need to feel defensive in a generally sympathetic audience of object fetishists.  Like Nick, Ed acknowledged that the hybrid model of book and online publications were the most likely path forward and he even proposed that the book might benefit in this scenario. Yet his language exposed an inevitable hierarchy: he talked about divvying up the information in a book so that one could "park” the less essential information "somewhere else.” That "somewhere else,” of course, was the ethereal territory of the web. At a later point Rui retorted that the web was not a dumping ground, but rather a space to be curated. The audience laughed when he asked whether we would dump all of our objects at the entrance of our museums. His humorous question, however, gets at the root of the problem: until we accept the validity of an online experience, not as a weaker substitute for a book or a tangential accessory, but rather as a legitimate experience on its own, we will either totter on the edge of the Peak of Inflated Expectations or drown in the Trough of Disillusionment. On the other hand, as Nick emphasized, embracing the potential to actively communicate with an audience via an online publication will also necessarily change the structure of the museum’s organization. Thus, the museum and the web do have to maintain a symbiotic relationship.

My own questions revolve around how the curator’s role will need to evolve to accommodate both. If online publications regarding our collections or exhibitions need to allow for dialogue, will we all need to actively monitor reader comments? Will we be called upon to maintain facebook pages or blogs for our projects? Or will museums develop web specific education departments to effectively play the role of docents in online galleries by offering live feedback to online visitors? And will all of that information strategically flow through editors or will typos and misinformation abound? If we could only summon a virtual labor force to wield what sounds like the never-ending responsibility to meet the demands of a dynamic, fluid, and very real online audience.

Several questions from the conference audience made clear that there is, indeed, still much territory ahead to navigate. How does copyright law work for images of art work in online publications? How do libraries consistently catalogue and archive online publications (especially when they are fluid and dynamic)? Is there an effective business model for online publications? Should museums provide online publications for free or as a benefit of museum membership or charge for varying levels of access? I am sure future AAMC panels will address these questions more specifically as we all attempt to achieve the Plateau of Productivity.

 
No matter how interesting a conference session may be, I typically spend most sessions with my notebook dutifully opened on my lap, listening carefully but just jotting down one or two ideas to bring back to the office. I was particularly looking forward to this panel, as I spend a great deal of time working with my institution’s collectors’ society, but I had no way of knowing I would walk out of the session with not one, not two, but three entire pages filled with tightly-scribbled notes. So many great ideas were tossed around that it was difficult to keep track of them all!
 
Katharine DeShaw’s donor development workshop was specific, logical, action-oriented, and made me feel like I had all the tools I needed to walk out of the room and ask the next donor I encountered for a million dollars. Well, perhaps not a million dollars, but the detailed strategies she presented were very empowering. Dedicated development staff are irreplaceable, but this presentation certainly made me see that, from time to time, an "ask” coming from both a development staffer and a curator might be just the inspiration needed to convince a particular donor to commit.
 
The remaining presenters were just as compelling; each one touched on issues that I face regularly. Their discussions left me with a laundry list of new ideas that I look forward to applying at my own museum: steering our young supporters’ group towards sponsorships for particular exhibitions, creating a system that will always notify donors when their work goes on view in our galleries or is loaned to another museum, holding collectors’ dinners in a unique artist’s studio rather than a generic restaurant, and further engaging younger supporters from my own peer group.
 
COURTNEY McGOWAN McNEIL
Curator of Art
mcneilc@telfair.org
w 912.790.8817

Blog Entry

Donor Cultivation

While I was only able to attend the presentation by Katharine DeShaw from United States Artists during the first half of the session, I found it especially engaging. I’m sure that the development staff of all our institutions already know most of this information, but I learned a great deal that I think will help me when I’m asked to contribute a narrative to fundraising proposals. Hopefully others did as well. I think this part of the session really outlined the nuts and bolts of donor cultivation, presenting data that provided a clear picture of what donors/patrons want from us as museums. Katharine’s ‘39 steps’ gave everyone the ‘how to’ format to conduct an ‘ask’ interview with a prospective donor. That we are all fundraising ambassadors for our museums is so true. You never know when a simple kind gesture might turn into a major gift, which has happened in my museum. I think it is valuable to continue sessions such as this one because they allow us as curators to tread outside our comfort zone and learn about the efforts at work in other parts of our institutions. With arts funding continually shrinking around the country, it is as important as ever that curators are armed with the information needed to assist in this area of development. The title of Katherine’s presentation, Donor Centered Fundraising "It’s Not Just Cocktail Parties…” is so appropriate; as it affects all of us now.

Barbara L. Jones

Chief Curator

Westmoreland Museum of American Art

One of the highlights of every AAMC conference for me is the "mentoring session.” As a junior curator working in the field for less than 7 years, I am paired with a senior curator with over 10 years of experience for an informal conversation. Mentoring in this way is a lot like electronic dating (I would know—that’s how my husband and I met). After learning a little bit about someone by exchanging a few emails and some astute Googling, we meet in person and attempt to have a fairly personal conversation while minimizing the awkwardness of our encounter. This year my mentor was Beth Venn, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Senior Curator of American Art at the Newark Museum. Unlike in past years, Beth and I don’t work in the same field (I’m a design curator), but that difference didn’t really matter. The same issues about professional development, squaring personal goals with the needs of your institution, and work-life balance apply no matter what field you’re in. Beth’s variety of professional experiences and practical advice helped me think about what kind of goals to set for myself and next steps in my career. Just hearing about someone else’s trajectory—how projects move from concept phase to realization, how to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves, and how one job can lead to the next—helped me see the bigger picture. And in a field as small as museum curating, it never hurts to have friends at institutions all around the country!

Bobbye Tigerman

Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Los Angeles County Museum of Art