Fall \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Harvest Moon<\/p>\n
Markers of having come from a different time, a time faraway, in another century, another millennium: sadness at the thought of Museum, Inc. servicing customers. \u00a0This is part of the DNA (get it?), the dynamic something or other, that will transform the MIA into a ship able to sail into the waters of the future. \u00a0Having led my share of strategic planning sessions, I know well the fervor and excitement that comes from bracing the winds of change, throwing up the collars for a good dose of reality, navigating dangerous waters all the time watching out for shoals. \u00a0The cliche police need to patrol these documents. \u00a0Come on.<\/p>\n
(picture from<\/p>\n
When Kate left Allina for retirement, she was so happy to go. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because the practice of medicine had gone, in her career, from a profession focused on patients to an organization focused on management by objective.<\/p>\n
In the Atlantic online magazine there is an article about the failure of liberal arts colleges. \u00a0That failure the author defines as not teaching\u00a0entrepreneurship. We’re still stuck, he says, back in the 60’s and 70’s when a college degree meant something. \u00a0Now history majors are out of work. \u00a0We need, he says, history majors who can be entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n
Yes, I admit it. \u00a0I bought into the liberal arts idea, that pursuing the intellectual path most interesting to you, most worthy of your passion was what higher education was about. \u00a0Still buy it.<\/p>\n
Here’s the problem. \u00a0Museums, especially art museums, do have a higher calling. \u00a0These fragile vessels care for the world’s cultural patrimony\/matrimony. \u00a0That calling, the curatorial burden we might call it, carries our mutual story forward and ensures that the next generation and the next and the next can pick up the narrative, weave it into their own lives. \u00a0That they can react to it and to our reactions. \u00a0That they can use it as shoulders to stand own when they take up the paint brush, the chisel, the hunk of clay.<\/p>\n
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This is not a business proposition. \u00a0This is a human responsibility, like caring for a family. \u00a0Does the family require money? \u00a0Of course. \u00a0Does money define the organizational structure of a family? \u00a0Do we want Family, Inc? \u00a0Maybe if your name is Corleone, otherwise probably not.<\/p>\n
Medicine is not about numbers of patients seen by the hour. \u00a0No, medicine is about the practiced eye, the trained mind, the relationship between one human and another. \u00a0Does the practice of medicine require money? \u00a0Of course. \u00a0Should that mean medicine needs to take on a corporate structure? \u00a0Of course not. \u00a0When money begins to define the purpose of an organization, that organization has become a business, an Inc. \u00a0Fine for making shoes, cereal, cars, widgets. \u00a0Not fine for art or medicine or families.<\/p>\n
The liberal arts education, whether at college or university, has the same responsibility as the art museum. \u00a0It inserts its students into the grand narrative of human history. \u00a0As humans we share so much with the humans of the past. \u00a0We make the same mistakes, for example. \u00a0We wonder about the same imponderable questions. \u00a0We struggle to express ourselves through literature, art, music.<\/p>\n
Does any of this deny the need for an economy, a place of trade and commerce? \u00a0No. \u00a0Not at all. \u00a0But when the Medici’s made their money what did they do with it? \u00a0When the robber barons got their millions what did they do with it? \u00a0What’s Bill Gates doing now? \u00a0They approach the arts, questions of justice, questions of human suffering.<\/p>\n
It is the liberal arts and the arts themselves that frame the questions, have the deep pool of answers, know the roads that lead away from civilization and those that lead toward it. \u00a0We can’t abandon these treasures because the business cycle has a predictable rough patch. \u00a0We can’t change healing and learning and creation into business models because it’s not their essence. \u00a0We will learn this now or later. \u00a0History teaches these lessons over and over.<\/p>\n
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Fall \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Harvest Moon Markers of having come from a different time, a time faraway, in another century, another millennium: … Continue reading The Curatorial Burden<\/span>