Fall Harvest Moon
It’s a tough time to be institutionally arty. Of course, the rarer times are when it’s not tough, but this is one of the tough times. Declining investment income, donor fatigue, changing audiences, sometimes diminishing audiences. Orchestras make the news, not for their wonderful sound, but for the latest lockout. MOMA opens on Monday to bring in more revenue.
(art news)
This means, too, that life inside these institutions, as I said in a previous blog, is under tension. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is no outlier. We’ve had new strategic plans, restructuring, bold new revenue plans and changes in special exhibitions. We’ve also had, and it’s reflected in a current upcoming dustup, organizational spasms revealed in attempts to discipline volunteers.
No, we’re not talking about Jerry Sandusky or Boy Scout or Roman Catholic kind of issues. No, these are much worse. Bullying, badgering, pushy e-mails. I know. Pretty scary, right! Then there’s that pesky issue of evidence, which in this case seems unavailable, contained in secret personnel files. How J. Edgar Hooverish.
The pushes and pulls inside these necessary organizations have begun to create bulges and cracks, silliness, paranoia.
This particular incident to which I refer has also revealed a process in which there is no appeal and where the body most likely to advocate for the docent was told it had no say. This is all very peculiar, hamfisted and seems designed to create a furor. Just why that would be desirable, I don’t know, but I think it’s gonna happen anyhow.
Granted, these are difficult times, but creating more problems on top of them doesn’t seem wise.
