Next up in my exploration of museum business models, a conversation with Tamara Christian, president of the International Spy Museum. The Spy Museum is the first museum I’ve found that has operated as both a for-profit and a nonprofit entity. As such, I was interested to learn how the legal status of the museum influenced its financial strategies and income streams.
–Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

Elizabeth Merritt (EM): Tamara, tell our readers a bit about the history of the International Spy Museum.

Tamara Christian (TC): The origins of the Spy Museum date to the Korean War when our founder, Milton Maltz, was in the US Navy, and stationed at the National Security Agency. He was assigned to code breaking and became very cognizant of the role intelligence plays in war and peacekeeping. He’d always had an interest in history, and this experience focused his attention on intelligence and national security. After he sold his company (Malrite Communications Group) in 1998, he and his wife Tamar focused attention on their philanthropic interests, including museums, medical, and educational causes.
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He still had an interest in intelligence and thought it would be an extraordinary concept for a museum. So he started an advisory board of people in the intelligence community to plan the International Spy Museum. It launched in 2002 as a for-profit company with an educational mission, with programs for adults and youth.

Trenton, NJ—The Discoverer Blog recently published its list of the coolest museum in each state in the country. The Old Barracks Museum is pleased to be named the Coolest Museum in New Jersey, named alongside the Getty Museum in California, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. This prestigious honor is wonderful news that the Old Barracks Museum is proud to share! The entire list can be seen here: https://blog.thediscoverer.com/the-coolest-museum-in-each-state/

Built in 1758 to house British soldiers sent to protect the colonial borders in the French and Indian War, the Trenton barracks were once the largest building in Trenton. During the American Revolution, the building stood witness to the Battle of Trenton, where General George Washington defeated Colonel Rall and his Hessian troops. After this battle, Washington ordered the building be used as a military hospital specializing in smallpox inoculations – the first of its kind in North America! Visitors take a guided tour of the portion of the barracks that has been restored to interpret this 18th century history, and are invited to view galleries on NJ’s involvement in the French and Indian War, the Battle of Trenton, and the Trenton women who saved the Barracks from being forgotten in the early 20th century.

Special events occur throughout the year. Highlights are the Battle of Trenton reenactments held every December during Patriots Week (www.patriotsweek.com), Colonial Summer Day Camp, Tavern Night Fundraiser in September, the Beulah Oliphant Award in March, “America, We Served!”: Three Centuries of African American Soldiers in February, frequent lectures and author discussions, and more.

General visitation is $10 for adults, $8 for students and seniors. Active duty military personnel are free of charge, and the Old Barracks Museum is a proud Blue Star Museum. Special events have various prices, visit www.barracks.org for more information.

ABOUT THE OLD BARRACKS MUSEUM: The Old Barracks Museum preserves the history of a building that was built as a French and Indian War military barracks and used as a Revolutionary War hospital. It also stood witness to Washington’s crucial victory at the Battle of Trenton. At the beginning of the 20th century, members of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Colonial Dames organized The Old Barracks Association and spearheaded a campaign to purchase the building. The building has been used as a museum for over a century, and has frequently been used as a symbol for the state of New Jersey. The Old Barracks Museum welcomes visitors from across the state as well as around the world.

Contact:
Lauren Ronaghan/Old Barracks Museum
101 Barracks Street
Trenton, NJ  08608
609 396-1776
lronaghan@barracks.org

BALTIMORE, MD - The Board of Directors of the Museum Trustee Association (MTA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Anne M. Lampe as CEO of the Association. Lampe will succeed Mary Baily Wieler, who for the last decade served as a board member, chair and more recently as President of MTA. Under Wieler's leadership MTA has grown substantially. Wieler also oversaw the launch of MTA's popular template series utilizing cloud-based software, making best practices accessible and affordable to the museum field.
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MTA Board Chairman Leland Peterson notes, “Ms. Lampe’s appointment was the culmination of a national search spearheaded by Management Consultants for the Arts, Inc. Lampe’s experience as a museum director as well as her service as a Trustee in other organizations gave her a comprehensive understanding of the Trustee/Director/Museum relationship. Additionally, Ms. Lampe’s curatorial experience in museums such as the Whitney and the Museum of Modern Art and her thirteen years as Executive Director and Chief Curator at the Demuth Foundation, where she transformed it from a small organization into a strong collecting, exhibiting and operational institution brought us confidence. She understands the various challenges museums of all sizes face today. We look forward to working with the first museum professional to lead our Association.”

Ms. Wieler, who was elected MTA Trustee Emerita noted, “I am thrilled with Anne Lampe’s appointment as MTA’s next CEO. Anne has led a MTA Member museum, attended our workshops and forums and participated on a panel at our San Juan forum. I am confident that she has the experience to take MTA to the next level.”

Ms. Lampe noted, “Trustees are the core of museums. Currently museums are facing a period of great transformation and are grappling with issues such as:  integration of digital innovations, program integration of social issues and collection issues ranging from questions of the focus of the collection, storage, to deaccessioning.  While every museum will address issues that are pertinent to their community, a strong group of Trustees, who are well educated in their role, governance and are engaged in the mission of their home museum, is necessary for its success.  Trustees who are well versed on current museum issues from a variety of perspectives, are best suited to engage and contribute to their institution.  I look forward to building on the momentum that Mary Wieler generated for the MTA and equipping the next generation of Trustees for the important work of sustaining and growing our cultural institutions for the future.”

For the last thirteen years, Lampe served as Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Demuth Foundation, which includes the Demuth Museum and Lancaster Museum of Art.  During her tenure she quadrupled the budget, doubled the exhibition space, and increased the permanent collection by 50%, making it the largest repository of Charles Demuth’s artwork anywhere in the world.  Additionally, she initiated the first publications program and a touring exhibitions program.  Lampe’s prior roles include Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum and Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art.  Lampe has lectured widely on early modernism and most recently published; Charles Demuth: The Demuth Museum Collection, 2018, Robert E. Locher: A Modern Classic, 2017 and Warren Rohrer: Painter of the Fields, 2017.        

Lampe’s appointment with the Museum Trustee Association is effective April 8 and she will be based in the MTA national office in Baltimore, MD.

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Fueled by philanthropic zeal, lucrative tax deductions and the prestige of seeing their works in esteemed settings, wealthy art owners have for decades given museums everything from their Rembrandts to their bedroom slippers.

It all had to go somewhere. So now, many American museums are bulging with stuff — so much stuff that some house thousands of objects that have never been displayed but are preserved, at considerable cost, in climate-controlled storage spaces.

The wait is over. This past weekend, after more than seven years of planning and three years of construction, Dartmouth celebrated the dedication of the expanded Hood Museum of Art—and opened its doors to the public.
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“Today the Hood once again commits to sharing its art generously,” John Stomberg, the Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director of the Hood, told a standing-room only crowd of 350 friends and contributors to the $50 million project at the formal dedication ceremony in Alumni Hall on Friday afternoon.

​The Baltimore Museum of Art has received a $3.5 million donation to support the position of chief curator, one of the largest endowment gifts the museum has seen since its founding in 1914.

The role will be renamed after the donors, the Baltimore-based philanthropists Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown. It is held by Asma Naeem, a specialist in American art and contemporary Islamic art who was appointed last August.
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“We see this endowment for chief curator as being a very significant statement, especially naming a person of color,” Mr. Brown, the founder and chief executive of Brown Capital Management, said. “That really appealed to us.”

The last museum-board leadership survey conducted by the American Alliance of Museums uncovered a staggering statistic: About 46 percent of American museums have all-white boards of directors.

But the alliance hopes that figure will change for the better soon. Over the next three years, the alliance will receive $4 million to bolster board diversity in a push to make museums more accessible and inclusive. The Ford, Andrew W. Mellon, and Alice L. Walton foundations joined forces to award the grant.

In the more than 20 years that museums talked about the importance of diversity and inclusion, the number of people of color serving on boards has barely budged, says Laura Lott, the alliance’s chief executive. She says that’s a real problem.

Making good on its mission to “create transformative experiences through art, for the benefit of all the people forever,” CMA has opened its digital archives to the public through a partnership with Creative Commons Zero (CC0), a global nonprofit dedicated to the free distribution of otherwise copyrighted images.

30,000 artwork images — nearly half of the museum’s entire collection — are now available for digital users to remix, research, merchandise, print, and explore. Better yet, released metadata for more than 61,000 works will allow scholars to more easily investigate conduct research into provenance and object histories. 

The controlling shareholders of Bonhams recently sold their stake in the auction house to Epiris, a British private equity firm, which quickly brought on additional management. As a former director, I am encouraged by this new infusion of financial support and executive leadership. However, I believe the challenges in expanding market share for any auction house are structurally endemic to the industry and are not easily overturned by a fresh infusion of capital and personnel alone.
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In the New York Times (“The Art World’s Elephant in the Room” 9/21/2018), Scott Reyburn recently suggests that Bonhams is an auction house “whose business model has (so far) relied on traditional lower and middle range art and antiques.”  In Reyburn’s view, this market is languishing as an effect of growing income inequality, as the wealthy seek ever more expensive prizes, leaving the sub-$50,000 marketplace bereft of buyers and liquidity.