ARTFUL APPROACH
As it turns 60, Phoenix Art Museum looks to rebuild itself
The Phoenix Art Museum will break out the champagne to celebrate its 60th anniversary on Nov. 18. But in the business office and the boardroom, the $10 million-a-year nonprofit has been in damage-control mode ever since the departure of executive director Amada Cruz in July. Cruz, 58, was on the job four years before moving on to the Seattle Art Museum, the latest rung in her steady rise up the career ladder. But in Phoenix, after promising — and at first delivering — surpluses, she left behind a $2.6 million debt and an alienated volunteer base. Those two things are connected: There’s a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of volunteers and donors. ●“It looks to me like the membership dropped by almost 50%,” said Jim Ballinger, who led the museum for 32 years before retiring in 2015. “The Circles membership ($1,500 to $25,000 donors) dropped by almost two-thirds. And you have 18 fewer trustees than you had five years ago. Those are losses that are hard to replace.”
Trustees (or directors, at some nonprofits) are often donors or major fundraisers themselves. Not all are wealthy, but they are prominent people with connections.
Although Ballinger no longer has any formal relationship with the board or administration, he spoke to The Arizona Republic at the museum’s invitation and offered his analysis of financial numbers shared Sept. 26 in an annual meeting for museum members and available at phxart.org.
It’s not just about dollars, Ballinger said. Volunteers bring their passion for the museum back into the community. It is intangible but essential.
“Just from a community point of view, it’s really important to have a strong art museum,” he said.
“You look at places I think are really hitting on all cylinders — the (Desert Botanical) Garden, the Heard (Museum)’s really come alive. ASU, some of their arts programming has just continued to get bigger and better out in the community. I think it’s been disappointing that the Phoenix Art Museum wasn’t able to keep pace with some of those efforts.”
‘We forgot the turkey’
The museum’s remaining leadership — including recent additions to the board who were recruited to repair the damage — acknowledge the scale of the problem and say their efforts to rebuild connections start with a commitment to transparency. Posting the details of the financial bad news on their website is just one example of that.
It all amounts to a public “our bad” and “please come back” to disaffected boosters, delivered in carefully crafted management-speak punctuated by the occasional folksy metaphor.
“Our financial position today is weaker because of lack of quality relationships between the museum and a significant portion of its constituency,” Mark Feldman, co-chair of the board, told The Republic.
“The museum is doing everything today to turn that around, but the changes that Amada made were made with the support of the board, with the support of the community. But as you know, there’s a difference between planning something and executing it. So I can say, ‘Hey, everyone come to my house for Thanksgiving,’ and then they all show up and I forget the turkey.
“Sometimes, we forgot the turkey.”
From deficit to surplus and back again
So, what happened?
Despite an early wave of staff turnover (voluntary and otherwise) and some public grumbling about her charge-ahead management style, Cruz’s first two years went well. With the arts sector at large betting on diversity and inclusion as the path to 21st century relevance, she stepped up outreach to the Latino community and started the museum’s exhibitions and website on a path toward full bilingualism.
Fundraising went well, with big gifts plumping up the endowment (an interest-generating nest egg). Cruz got to announce a surplus and cleared $5 million in debt left over from the Great Recession
years.
But in her hurry to transform how the museum engages with the public, board leaders acknowledge, she failed to secure the buy-in of the volunteers who do a lot of the actual work of engaging the public: the docents, who serve as tour guides and art experts.
Or, as one woman put it in a March 6 exposé by Robrt Pela in the Phoenix New Times, Cruz was “murder(ing) the museum.”
A battle over how to talk to the public
Cruz declined to speak on the record about her time in Phoenix. But Feldman reiterates that the changes that the New Times described as “dumbed down” docent training were approved by the board.
“It was about having more of an engagement with people than a seminar,” he said. “So the changes that we focused on, in addition to reducing the size of what is one of the larger docent support groups in the United States, was to change the nature of the conversation.
“We wanted to have a different vibe as people were touring around our museum. One of the things about art is, you can sit and look at it, but until you have a conversation, some of the things that could pop, don’t pop.”
Ballinger, who was known to be attuned to the niceties of persuasion, said he had made changes to the docent training as well, but had introduced them carefully.
“You had hundreds of people, predominantly women, who had been very dedicated to the museum for a long time,” he said. “They were all members. At one point, 25% of the docents were Circles members.”
Many had included the museum in their wills, he added.
“They were significant stakeholders. So if you are going to change a group like that, you have to be careful about how you do it. We were doing it slowly. Obviously the way of the last few years was to go to rapid change, which is a different style. It’s not always right or wrong, but at least short-term there was some blowback.”
Losses and gains
By many measures, Cruz’s tenure was a success. Annual attendance averaged 276,000 over the past four years, compared with 250,000 for the four years prior. That translated into more revenue from admissions as well as an increase in gifts from small donors.
But the shortfall from larger donors dwarfed those financial gains, and it didn’t help that a key position in the development office went unfilled for 18 months, said Mark Koenig, chief financial officer and interim director. Hence the fresh pile of debt. Meanwhile, the artistic staff is down to a skeleton crew after two curators followed Cruz out the door. Vanessa Davidson (Latin American art) moved on to the Blanton Museum of Art in Texas, and Dennita Sewell (fashion design) left after 19 years to focus on the fashion program at Arizona State University, which she took over in 2016.
What’s next for the Phoenix Art Museum?
A national search for a director is being led by Koya Leadership Partners, a big name in the nonprofit headhunting game. The search committee — with none of the same board members as Cruz’s — is being guided by surveys and in-depth conversations with staffers, donors and volunteers, said Don Opatrny, a former Goldman Sachs partner who was brought on as a trustee a year ago to help with the transition.
He said they were looking for a midcareer professional with rock-solid credentials and “a very high EQ” (emotional intelligence).
It’s said that every crisis is an opportunity. And with 60 years of history and $26 million invested in the endowment, the Phoenix Art Museum isn’t exactly an empty canvas to fill. But 2020 will definitely be a “rebuilding year.”