Maybe it’s due to the recent museum boom. Maybe it’s the baby boomers heading toward retirement. Or maybe it’s simply the economy lowering the boom on nonprofit institutions everywhere. From 1998 to 2000, there were almost 500 nationally advertised director/CEO openings in Aviso, AAM’s monthly newsletter.2 The number of open director positions and high-profile director departures continues today. Thus, if you are part of a museum that recently changed directors, you belong to a sizable club. If the transition was smooth, consider yourself a fortunate member of the club. But if your director change was dramatic, resulting in turmoil and wagging tongues, you are not alone.
Consider these news stories, all from the year 2001. Headline in a Midwestern business journal: Unhappy staff bolt museum: departures blamed on new chief’s style. The story: discontent with a new museum director recently hired out of the corporate sector has triggered the exodus of 13 out of 21 senior staff, a talent drain that some business leaders fear will damage this museum’s stature. Headline in a widely-read East Coast daily: Museum of Rotating Chiefs. The story: a local museum is so dominated by its founding board that six directors have rotated through in 14 years, the latest leaving after only three months on the job. Two stories appearing on the same day on different coasts about different museums: Leadership Shakeup at . . . Museum; Museum CEO leaves suddenly. Story in a southwestern newspaper a few days later: another museum director has left after four years on the job due to frequent clashes between board and staff. The board “suspects the director of sympathizing with philistines.” And front-page news in a major western city: Museum director resigns abruptly: Even wife is surprised. The director is quoted citing personal financial needs. A few days later, a political gossip column reveals a generous six-figure salary and positions a head shot of the director next to that of a philandering member of Congress.
Stories like these promise tumultuous, scandalous mismanagement, and high-pitched board-director blowouts. In a field as earnest as the museum profession, such coverage of its leaders is uncomfortable. In their quest to become more popular, should museums simply rejoice in the fact that their directors’ travails are deemed newsworthy, capable perhaps of selling papers? Or is this proliferation of headlines no mere sales strategy? Is there a looming national crisis in turnover and burnout in the museum profession?
Some new data begins to answer this question. In 2001, to assess training needs in the nonprofit sector, the San Francisco-based CompassPoint Nonprofit Services surveyed 1,072 executive directors of nonprofit organizations of all sizes in California, Texas, Hawaii, and Washington, D.C.3 The researchers found that the average tenure of directors is three to five years. CompassPoint suggests two reasons behind such short tenure: lack of management training and/or lack of nonprofit experience. Almost two-thirds of directors participating in the study have no prior training in executive leadership, are performing the job for the first time, and/or are recruited from outside their organizations. It is hardly surprising that a majority of directors reported long hours and high stress. More pointedly, despite their commitment to their organizations’ missions, half stated that they never want to be a director again.
The problem of museum director turnover is further documented in “The Time Between: A Report of Museum Interim Executive Leadership Patterns,” produced by the Knoxville-based consulting firm, Wakefield Connection, Inc., in collaboration with the Arts Consulting Group, Inc. This study, released in February 2002, analyzes the experiences of museums that searched (nationally) for directors during the 1998 to 2000 period. Particularly alarming is the finding that many directors leave “fairly quickly after giving notice.” Fifty percent of directors of museums with budgets under $500,000 participating in this study gave two weeks (or less) notice before their departures. And on average, in museums of all sizes, directors gave less than five weeks notice.4 This sobering statistic suggests not only that many directors never want to do the job again, but also that once they make the decision to leave (or the decision is made for them), they “want out” as fast as possible. Both the Wakefield Connection and CompassPoint reports foreshadow a serious talent drain for our field.
CompassPoint’s findings of short tenure, long hours, and high stress mirror University of Nebraska professors Hugh Genoways and Lynne Ireland’s research for their forthcoming book on museum management (AltaMira Press, 2003). Most museum directors, Genoways and Ireland discovered, last less than four years at their posts. The authors suggest that museum management has become such a complex endeavor that there is a high burnout rate in our field. Practitioners from across the country echo their concern. “Having to constantly raise money and resolve so many ongoing financial and personnel pressures is wearying to the extreme,” says Michael Hawfield, director of the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska. “There is so much pressure and expectation to be excellent at all things; it requires tremendous self-sacrifice,” says Terrie Rouse, former director of the African American Museum of Philadelphia, who resigned in summer 2001. “We need help.”
How can museums continue to advance in society with such pressure on the person at the helm? Are museum directors really burning out? To gain some insight, I interviewed a group that has thought long and hard about the role of a museum leader: directors who have thrived in the museum field for 15 years or more. I also interviewed researchers, executive recruiters, and successful directors who have left their positions recently.5 A tangled story emerged.
One version goes like this: A museum director’s job is extraordinarily demanding and only getting more so. Yet no matter what the data may say about high stress and long hours, a great many executives enjoy the challenge and are optimistic about their work. Bright and creative people who have the capacity to be leaders and want to be leaders fill museums. But because museums have become so complex, there is no agreement on what qualifies a person to be in charge of one. Priorities shift constantly. This lack of clarity causes friction at both the staff and board levels. Some up-and-coming museum staff burn out of the profession entirely. For others who strive to move up the ranks, training, most especially in financial management and board relations, is lacking.
The board plays a significant role. To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, all happy boards are alike, but every unhappy board is unhappy in its own way. Board members may have agendas different from those of staff, further complicating a museum’s priorities. In times of change (and for museums, those times never seem to cease), some boards blame the person at the helm rather than consider the bigger picture. “I’ve seen superb directors get blindsided by a board for no reason,” a history museum director confided to me. “We are all one rogue board member from potential ugliness.” Boards fire directors and—rather than looking inside their organizations or assessing the doability of the director’s job—often hire an outsider, either from another museum or from another profession altogether. Senior staff leave, some to become directors of other museums, even though they may lack executive training. The job of the director becomes even more demanding.
Of course, this scenario has countless variations and does not apply to all museums. There are other reasons why people leave or remain in jobs. Yet I believe that three issues— organizational complexity, burnout, and tension around the hiring of outsiders—diagnose the overall challenge we face in bringing stability to the position of director and the museum profession as a whole. It is important that board and staff acknowledge these three issues if we are to deal with the problem of director turnover.
Museums as Complex Organizations
Consider J.Q. Average Museum Director. My research paints a median composite of a white 52-year-old, with at least a master’s degree. If J.Q. is female, she probably runs a small or medium-sized museum, rather than a large one. She earns less money than her male counterpart, no matter what her education, job experience, or institution size.6 In the year 2002, J.Q. finds herself in charge of an institution markedly different from the museums of her 1950s and ’60s childhood. The business, academic, technological, and social environment in which she lives has transformed. A once sleepy and elitist set of institutions has grown into a fast-paced, multi-billion dollar industry.
If J.Q. has museum experience, it is likely as a curator or educator. J.Q. may have been part of an era of innovation that took place roughly from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. During this time, institutions like the Boston Children’s Museum, Exploratorium, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, and Williams College, to name a few prominent examples, were beehives of innovation. New kinds of exhibits, programs, and scholarship—such as interactivity, blockbusters, community festivals, and diverse ways of looking at art and history—changed the face of museums. Many leaders in the field emerged from these institutions and others with similar goals.
In the 1990s, museums concentrated on institutionalizing and replicating these innovations. Attracting and serving visitors, raising capital funds, and augmenting operating budgets were all part of this trend. As Boston Children’s Museum President and CEO Lou Casagrande frankly states: “The corporatization of museums, the cookie-cutter mentality, the shift to a blockbuster and an audience emphasis, the team process—all things I admit I was part of—have made museums de-emphasize the horsing around and kookiness that resulted in so many innovations.” A bright spot of museum innovation in the 1990s—where experimentation and a distinctive brand of kookiness was tolerated—was technology, but it was mostly relegated to basements and back rooms and, with few exceptions, has yet to be fully integrated into museums’ overall planning and operations.
For the most part, museums became multifaceted businesses. This complexity boils down to three concurrent and overlapping phenomena: 1) the shifting emphasis to visitors; 2) the growth in size and number of museums; and 3) a unique financial structure. The pace of these developments has been especially dizzying in the last 10 years and has profoundly affected directors.
Visitors at the Gates
Directors of J.Q.’s childhood museums tended to be scholars, concerned with connoisseurship and research. Today’s directors focus on a museum’s public presence. “I’ve seen a generation of change in my 27 years in museums. The most profound is the shift in emphasis from collections to visitors,” says Harry Parker, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “I am spending much more of my time thinking about marketing, attendance, and community issues.” Community accessibility sits at the top of most directors’ agendas. “Museums have become much more open and accessible to the community,” says Seattle Art Museum Director Mimi Gates. “That’s a priority for us now.”
The shift toward marketing and visitors contributes to museums’ growing attendance. But this also means that museums have become preoccupied not with scholarship, but with attendance figures. “How are your numbers?” is a common greeting among colleagues at professional meetings. In the past few years, the news usually has been good. No matter how you crunch the data, more people use museums today than ever before. Overall, in the United States, visitorship expanded by 50 percent in the last 10 years.7
The influx of visitors is both a blessing and a challenge for directors. A visitor-oriented attraction adds new responsibilities to their plates. “I used to tell my friends that in addition to the museum, I ran a parking lot, a storage warehouse, an educational research institute, a food service, a design studio, a manufacturing operation, and a retail outlet,” quips Sally Osberg, former director of the Children’s Discovery Museum, San Jose, Calif.
Bigger Museums, More Museums
More public use also means that museums run out of space, prompting capital campaigns. In a 1990s business climate that stressed growth above all else, museums felt pressured to grow. Budgets and facilities multiplied exponentially. Many directors were excited by the entrepreneurial spirit of the decade and very successful at growing their institutions. “In my 10 years at [Seattle’s] Wing Luke Asian Museum, the budget has grown eight-fold,” says Director Ron Chew. “We’ve grown from a small to a mid-sized museum.” Not all directors were skillful in managing this level of expansion. “I’ve seen plenty who drained their organization’s budgets,” confides a director with 25 years’ experience. But for the most part, museums took advantage of a strong economy and produced admirable results. In 1999, two-thirds of museums reported an operating surplus.8
New museums are also part of this financial growth. No exact figures show how many new museums have sprung up recently, but ask most museum directors and they will rattle off the names of new museums and competing capital campaigns in their locales. “In my community, we have seen three new museums in the last 10 years and, at the same time, my museum’s attendance has doubled,” says Gail Andrews Trechsel, director of Alabama’s Birmingham Art Museum. “That’s a lot of growth for a metropolitan area of about 1 million.”
Often, the most committed entrepreneurs are museum founders, with the drive and stamina to work at a fast pace. Start-up museums also attract a new kind of board member, one with little museum experience and less ties to past models. Experienced board and staff members in such communities are stretched. Thus, many non-experienced people sign on with great ideas and expectations, but few concrete skills to run their museums once they are built. Have museums accelerated too quickly? Have our forays into entrepreneurship resulted in great expectations we can’t keep or pay for? What does all the expansion and growth do to those in charge?
A Financial Juggernaut
Museums have become complex financial operations. John McCarter, director of the Field Museum, Chicago, and formerly a consultant for Booz-Allen, believes that even the smallest museum can be as complicated as a major corporation. Museums perform many functions at the same time. They attract visitors, provide amenities, conduct scholarly research, care for precious objects, establish international alliances, and provide community services. But income streams don’t necessarily dovetail with these diverse activities; surplus funds from some activities pay for other programs that lose money but support mission. Income sources constantly fluctuate, each source demanding its own strategy.
Unlike most organizations in the for-profit sector, it’s impossible to cleanly reconcile a museum’s services (and thus expenses) with its revenues. Each line of income is beholden to a different stakeholder or market segment and, at the same time, intertwined with other income and expense lines. Admissions income depends on bringing in visitors. Retail operations must entice visitors not just to attend, but to buy. Membership programs must induce them not just to buy, but to join. Government funding requires strategic relationships with local politicians. Foundations want to see community impact and outcome-based evaluation. Research grants must satisfy scholarly standards and peer-review panels. And, finally, directors must maintain traditional relationships with major patrons, as well as have some understanding of how to invest endowment funds.
Attending to these simultaneous and often conflicting needs is so demanding that executives have little time for reflection and even less room for making mistakes. Juggling only begins to describe a director’s day. Juggling, at least, has a predictable rhythm. A day in the life of a museum director is multifarious, its predictability apparent only to a mathematician or expert gambler. During the course of my interviews, one director was getting ready for an important meeting on museum parking; another was interrupted when a local politician walked into the museum and demanded immediate attention; one was installing labels for an exhibit opening and talking to me at the same time; and two—in separate cities—were called into last-minute legal proceedings over a land-use issue related to the museum’s building project.
“A museum director is a CEO of an important community business,” says Charlene Akers, director of the Scurry County Museum, Snyder, Tex. Yet only a few earn close to what a CEO of a for-profit company makes. Who in their right mind would take on such a complicated enterprise? Isn’t the exhausting scenario painted here simply a recipe for burnout? Surprisingly, director burnout is not as pervasive as one might think.
Who Is Really Burning Out?
“I am incredibly exhausted in my work as a museum director, but I am exhilarated as well,” says Lou Casagrande. “And I am not burned out.” Ann Mintz, director of the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Mass., agrees: “I may get tired, but I don’t burn out. That is, I don’t lose my enthusiasm for my work or museums.” Jim DeMersman, director of the Hayward Area Historical Society Museum, Hayward, Calif., captures a common feeling: “At times I find my work very spiritual and gratifying; after 25 years as a director, I still love coming to work every single morning.” Museum directors are passionate about their work, and I heard countless stories about the pleasures of leading such vital community resources.
Burnout in the museum profession, however, should not be minimized. Burnout not only hurts organizational productivity, but is also a health hazard. Defined by psychologists as high emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (“shutting down,” “emotionally removing yourself from a situation”), and low personal achievement, the essence of burnout is a clash between a person’s idealistic expectations and the reality of the workplace. The combination of a person’s work environment and personality sets the stage for burnout. Lack of clearly defined boundaries, workaholism, and time-management problems contribute as well. Fortunately, growing old has its benefits. The longer people stay in a field or at a job, the less likely they are to burn out.9 That is all the more reason to prevent unnecessary turnover.
Directors with whom I spoke have well-honed skills for dealing with the fast pace of contemporary museum work. They are aware of—and even claim to practice—proven coping strategies against burnout. These include regular exercise, a sense of humor, and maintaining open communication with staff and board members. Developing a thick skin and taking regular vacations also were frequently mentioned. “It is vital to know yourself very well,” explains Dan Keegan, director of the San Jose Museum of Art. “I did a lot of serious soul searching before I became a director.” Professionals who have an honest awareness of their own shortcomings are more able to ameliorate situations that put them at risk of burnout. Directors also share a strong esprit de corps and regularly share information with each other. “I have a wide network of colleagues who provide me with support,” says Karen Franklin, director of the Judaica Museum of the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, N.Y. Good board-staff relations and a shared set of realistic goals are vital as well. Nina Zannieri, director of the Paul Revere Memorial Association in Boston, for example, attributes her longevity to working with an excellent board and staff.
Although successful directors do not burn out, the problem in museums is more insidious. Museums burn their staffs out. “I think other museum workers such as curators and educators experience more burnout than directors,” says Steven High, director of the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno. “They came to museums for the content, not the pace.” People who step into a leadership role have a certain resiliency, as well as control over their work environment. Those in middle- and entry-level positions may not. These are the museum workers most in danger of burning out and leaving the museum field. Younger employees and those who come to museums from other industries enter the field with excitement and idealism inspired by their experiences as museum-goers as well as the unique flavor of a museum’s building, collections, and mission. People who are prone to burnout tend to be givers who strive to make a difference and be recognized and appreciated for doing so.10 If a museum’s culture exploits this kind of personality, these workers face the possibility of burnout.
It behooves museum directors to create a workplace that allows employees drawn to museum work to thrive. Clearly defined expectations are the most important step in creating a work environment that is burnout-proof. Yet how can museum directors foster this kind of workplace if their positions are subject to so much pressure from external forces? Perhaps the fast pace and increasing complexity of the museum forces a situation where directors push their organizations forward and take care of themselves, but cannot create an environment that fosters long-term growth and security for others in the profession.
When a director departs after a few years, no matter what the circumstances, she may leave behind an institution with a stretched and anxious board, an expectant community, a precariously balanced set of revenues and expenses, and a potentially burned-out staff, possibly with no trained successor in place—all on short notice. Is it any wonder that many boards turn to outsiders?
Who’s an Insider?
Who’s an Outsider?
How can museum boards fill empty executive positions? Sometimes they go to other museums (which in turn leaves another institution with a leadership vacuum). But successful directors may not want to leave their positions, especially in the midst of a capital campaign. Besides, the CompassPoint report found that half of nonprofit directors never want to be a director again. Both the CompassPoint study and anecdotal evidence from the field suggest that many new museum directors are coming from other industries.
The hiring of outsiders for leadership positions causes much consternation and more headlines about museums, from the behemoth Smithsonian Institution to the smallest local museum. If museums are so particular and so complex, how can someone who does not understand their content (or contents) lead them? What if a “corporate type” comes in and only cares about the short-term bottom line, compromising scholarship, collections, and programs that have taken years to develop? “Do outsiders really have the passion to guide a museum to its core mission?” Birmingham’s Gail Andrews Trechsel asks. “I have been with the same institution for 25 years and was promoted from the inside. I came to my position very committed to the museum.” Steven High, who advanced to his first director position from the curatorial ranks and holds an M.B.A., agrees: “It’s much easier to manage a museum when you understand how one works.” Phillippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, argues that developing a pool of curators with the qualifications to become museum directors is essential for the future of art museum leadership. He believes that a system that puts outside administrators—as opposed to content specialists—at the head of museums will eventually tip the balance in favor of a market-driven rather than a mission-driven museum.11
Since we possess no precise data on how many museums are run by outsiders, fears may be exaggerated. According to Nancy Nichols, executive recruiter for the search firm Heidrick & Struggles, boards of the major museums with which she works still prefer candidates with museum experience and content knowledge: “I’ve only placed one so-called outsider and that was for a museum in very bad financial shape that needed someone with proven business skills. The candidate wowed the board. Major candidates do not come from the outside. In my experience, there are extraordinary candidates coming from within museums.”
Whatever the extent of the situation, let’s admit to ourselves that at times, museums benefit when outsiders are hired to lead them. Outsiders may offer financial, personnel, or community-building skills that the museum hasn’t nurtured from within its ranks. An outsider may clean up a financial mess rather than letting it fester by doing things the same way. She also may have the clout to deal with what one director aptly described to me as “the well-entrenched employee who makes everyone’s life miserable.” Since community relations are a priority, a leader’s local connections may be more important than an understanding of museum practice. A former director in a mid-sized city—whose successor is a local leader with an M.B.A. and no museum experience—poses this question: “If museums are so set on reaching their communities, isn’t it better to hire someone committed to the area than someone with museum training from another city?”
Ellsworth Brown is president of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, the parent entity of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Andy Warhol Museum, and Carnegie Science Center. From his vantage point, overseeing museums of diverse disciplines in one community, Brown believes that outsiders may breathe fresh air into the field. “Of course we should be bringing in people from the outside. We have to admit that sometimes we may not have the right people on the inside. Museums are the ones that have been insular and put up barriers for years. I think bringing in outsiders is a sign of our health; we are finally reaching out to the world and it’s a big place.”
Even if boards hire outsiders from throughout the globe with the best of intentions, tension between insiders and outsiders feeds the turnover problem. Museum internal culture can be daunting. Willard L. Boyd, former director of the Field Museum, addressed this tension in his keynote remarks at the August 2001 Visitor Studies Association annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.: “Is it any wonder that the museum field was appalled when I went to the Field Museum? The board of trustees wanted a fund raiser, and I wanted a different kind of educational venue with which I had no experience. . . . I had a lot to learn about museum learning when I got to the museum. Very few people in the museum offered to help me learn. Most said you do not know anything about museums—leave it to the experts. You should be seen and not heard, and you should only be seen with donors.”12
If insiders can be unwelcoming, outsiders can wreak havoc in museums. In the very worst of cases, outsiders inspire contempt and public calls for resignation among their peers. Consider the present case of Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lawrence Small, accused of selling out the Smithsonian’s long-term integrity to short-term donor interests. This hotly debated charge grabbed such headlines in February that one wealthy donor retracted her $38-million gift, citing exasperation with critics of her plan to found a Hall of American Achievement (see “Give and Take,” page 9). In other instances, such as a museum in one of the news stories mentioned earlier, directors hired from the corporate sector drive qualified museum-trained staff to quit their posts in fury. But even when the new chief seeks to retain qualified staff and uphold the museum’s mission, the practice of hiring from the outside sends a strong message to those on the inside: the path to the top is blocked. Entrepreneurial acumen is more important than core mission. If business people from the outside and content people on the inside are perpetually set up to alienate one another, talent is drained on both ends.
On the subject of outsiders, John McCarter, Boyd’s successor at the Field, offers this advice: “Other types of institutions and industries have orderly career paths that people can follow. As long as museums want to continue to be complex institutions and, at the same time, don’t cultivate successors from within the ranks, they will need to turn to people with outside experience to lead them.” Adds Lou Casagrande: “Museums do not make a wholesale effort to nurture people in number two positions to become directors.”
Therein lies the problem. What is the line of succession in museum leadership, especially in a profession that may be burning out its middle-level ranks? At some museums, a deputy director is in charge of content—exhibitions, collections, and programs—whereas at others, he may focus on internal operations such as finance or visitor services. At some museums, the development director is a CEO’s closest confidante. Yet at others, it is the chief curator. Traditionally, curators ascended to executive roles. But with so many other power brokers—marketers, educators, fund raisers, financial officers—at the table, no clear-cut career ladder presents itself. Thus, some boards parachute outsiders in, hoping that they will somehow cut through the jungle of tangled priorities.
Nurturing and Sustaining Talent
As a whole, museums have much to be proud of. They have successfully ridden the tide of change and they have flourished. Competing in a world increasingly driven by the bottom line and commercial culture, the great majority have maintained their integrity. Some have boomed; others have blossomed. Still others have nearly gone bankrupt and individuals have led heroic acts of rescue. This collective success would not have been possible without a generation of directors acting like entrepreneurial scholars, artfully bridging the worlds of scholarship and business, mission and market. The problems of turnover and burnout, however, threaten to undo much of this great work. Left unchecked, the revolving door at the top jeopardizes the operations beneath. The task of improving the long-term health of museum leadership reaches beyond the position of the director. The problem of turnover involves everyone, from board to staff and even perhaps to funders. Its solution may be found through innovative approaches to compensation, training, and research.
First, let’s address the ongoing issue of compensation. The CompassPoint study found that, as a group, directors are more motivated by their organization’s mission than by a large salary. Still, no one would dispute that they deserve to be paid well for their work. It is fortunate, therefore, that directors’ salaries are rising. Yet the gap between what directors make and what their staffs are paid is growing, fueling discontent and lack of continuity in mid-level positions. The gender gap is also an ongoing embarrassment, especially in an industry that claims to be so devoted to ethics and equity. To nurture and sustain talent, the field needs fair compensation at all levels.
Executive recruiter Geri Thomas, who runs leadership and management workshops for arts professionals, states it well: “I find that on one hand museums are extremely interesting and progressive places. Museum workers are fabulous at understanding and displaying culture. On the other hand, we are not rewarding people for their work. A few stars make the large salaries. Yet a real dialogue on compensation needs to begin so that middle managers can afford to stay in their jobs, and administrative staff can get the training and salaries they need to advance in the profession.”
Salaries are linked, of course, to museums’ financial resources. Some may argue that more public and private funding is the key to raising salaries. Yet, as discussed above, each new funding source comes with added responsibilities and expenses that may tax museums more than it supports them. The issue at hand is wise allocation of resources and equitable compensation packages, perhaps taking into account not just pay, but flexible work schedules, vacations, sabbaticals, coaching, and/or training opportunities.
The second imperative for combating turnover is a systematic emphasis on leadership training. Board-director breakdowns are part of the turnover problem at the top. Some boards need to learn the skills to set reasonable goals and develop sound hiring practices. Some also need to become more informed about changing museum practices. Most first-time executives will benefit from training in financial management, board relations, and personnel. Directors also need to invest in training opportunities for willing staff.
But there must be standards for this training. Much verbiage exists on what constitutes a great leader and solid management practice. Leadership-theories-of-the-month come and go as rapidly as get-rich-quick schemes. To provide stability and clarity for museum leaders, the museum profession must be careful about choosing leadership training strategies and programs. The most consistently praised training program for mid-level personnel and new directors is the Getty’s Museum Management Institute (MMI). Harvard University runs a well-regarded training program for art museum directors. Museum studies and other university-led programs are also good resources and may well be the current and future incubators of innovation in the field.
Finally, we must recognize that training programs for museum leaders can only do so much without more robust industry-wide data. Information on museum turnover, burnout, and advancement is primarily anecdotal, coming from scattered journalistic inquiries, hearsay through professional networks, and extrapolating from other industries’ studies. We need more reliable data about museums. A comprehensive national study along the lines of the CompassPoint report focusing solely on museums would go a long way to giving us a realistic picture of what directors and would-be directors experience, and what they need to be more successful. Steps in this direction include a fall 2001 survey of cultural leaders by the Illinois Arts Alliance (through the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago); a January 2000 unpublished survey to gauge the training needs of art museum directors, conducted by the Association of Art Museum Directors in preparation for its leadership conference; and the national survey examining interim museum leadership practices conducted by the Wakefield Connection, Inc., and the Arts Consulting Group, Inc.
Personnel make up at least 50 percent of museums’ annual expenses. Yet we know more about how to motivate and retain our visitors than we know about motivating and retaining our staff. Substantial resources, including the elaborate reports written by audience evaluators, analyze our visitors. Yet as a profession, the museum field has expended virtually no energy on understanding itself. Psychologists have studied the phenomenon of job stress and burnout in entry and mid-level positions in health, human services, and education since the 1970s. Such wide-ranging trades as the military, clergy, and even sports have recently invested in detailed studies on burnout and turnover in their professions. Museums have not. There is so much that we need to know.
To help boards make informed hiring decisions, we need to be able to objectively compare the experiences of those who have been promoted from within, from another museum, and those who came in from the outside. How prevalent is each practice? What are the common circumstances leading to each? Are there differences between discipline, size, and region? What has been the outcome for the museum? What happens to people who apply for director positions and aren’t hired?
To help directors, we need to look at museum boards nationwide and understand their perspectives on hiring and overseeing a director’s work. What do they feel their role is? Where do they need help? What is their vision for the future of our profession?
To help staff, we need to understand the phenomenon of turnover and advancement in our profession. Are there personality traits or work environments common to museum professionals that contribute to success? To turnover? Is turnover even such a bad thing? How do museums with high turnover compare to museums that retain their staff for a long time? Some may think that the answers to these questions are obvious. But as we’ve learned from studying visitors and working with new audiences, reliable data and active listening often yield unexpected results.
Directors occupy a changing and precarious position within a cultural industry that continues to transform. Museums face outside financial and community pressures as well as forces emerging from traditional areas of content and collections. Museum directors often find themselves caught between board members, heads of different departments, and community stakeholders. Clearly, while many museum directors have an indomitable spirit, and while their record proves that they can move mountains when they need to, we can’t go on ignoring our human resources. If we can devise new ways to use collections, create exhibits, and program for visitors, why can’t we spend more time sustaining our employees? In an industry that has reinvented itself over the past 30 years, there’s no reason why we can’t create a bright future for all our talent.
References
1. Toni Morrison, Jazz (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 9.
2. Arts Insights e-newsletter, February 2002.
3. Jeanne Peters and Timothy Wolfred, Daring to Lead: Nonprofit Executive Directors and Their Work Experience (San Francisco: CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, August 2001).
4. Richard W. Ferrin, Ph.D., “The Time Between: A Report of Museum Interim Executive Leadership Patterns” (Knoxville: The Wakefield Connection, Inc., in collaboration with the Arts Consulting Group, Inc., 2002), p. 9.
5. In addition to those quoted, I want to thank Kathleen Brown, LORD Cultural Resources; Mimi Gaudieri, Association of Art Museum Directors; Christopher Perrius, Cultural Policy Center, University of Chicago; and Timothy Wolfred, CompassPoint, for their valuable assistance. In addition, thank you to all who
anonymously shared their ideas and stories with me.
6. See CompassPoint report. Also Shannon Henry, “Wage Gap Widens,” Washington Post, Jan. 23, 2002.
7. Source: Institute of Museum and Library Services. Of course, growth spurts are never even. Attendance at art and history museums has grown the most, while attendance at natural history museums may have slightly declined. See 1999 AAM Museum Financial Information Survey (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2000).
8. 1999 AAM Museum Financial Information Survey.
9. Steven D. Pomerantz, “Predictive Indicators of Job Burnout in Nonprofit Organizations” (San Francisco: Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management: University of San Francisco, 1994).
10. Ruth Luban, Keeping the Fire: From Burnout to Balance (Ruth Luban Audio
& Books, July 1996).
11. Phillippe de Montebello, “The Art Museum’s Most Valuable Currency: Curatorial Expertise,” Art Newspaper 12, no. 115 (June 2001), pp. 10-11.
12. Willard L. Boyd, “Museums as Centers of Learning,” Visitor Studies Today! 4, no. 3 (Fall 2001), p. 6.
Selected Bibliography
Author’s note: Many writers have weighed in with a perspective on theissue of leadership in museums. The following resources provide especially thought-provoking discussions:
D’Arcy, David. “A Price on the Heads,” Art & Auction, Summer 2001, pp. 81-83.
Deachman, Bruce. “A Question of Leadership,” MUSE, September/October 2001.
Genoways, Hugh. “Challenges for Directors of University Natural Science Museums,” Curator 42, no. 3 (July 1999), pp. 216-30.
Goldberger, Paul. “Doesn’t Anyone Want this Job?,” New York Times,June 26, 1994.
Gurian, Elaine Heumann, ed. Institutional Trauma in Museums and Its Effect on Staff. Washington, D.C., American Association of Museums, 1995.
Lubow, Arthur. “The Curse of the Whitney,” New York Times Magazine,April 11, 1999.
Maher, Mary: “Thoughts from an Organizational Coach: An Interviewwith Roy Shafer,” Hand to Hand 16, no. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 7-9.
Tolles, Bryant F. Leadership for the Future: Changing Directorial Roles in American History Museums and Historical Societies. Nashville: American Association of State and Local History, 1991.
Marjorie Schwarzer is chair, Department of Museum Studies, John F. Kennedy University, Orinda, Calif. She is a regular contributor to Museum News.
