One of the most famous American painters and illustrators, Norman Rockwell produced pithy artwork to promote democracy and civic engagement in his time. Now, a museum in Massachusetts dedicated to him asked artists to design "get out the vote" posters for 2020.

​The Unity Project debuted on Tuesday, National Voters Registration Day, on the Norman Rockwell Museum's website. It features six original pieces specially commissioned for the campaign from a diverse group of artists: Mai Ly Degnan, Rudy Gutierrez, Anita Kunz, Tim O'Brien, Whitney Sherman and Yuko Shimizu.

On the same page, voters can register for the 2020 election and share the artwork to promote the cause. Among those who were inspired to share the campaign on their social media profiles is 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who posted about the initiative on Instagram.

"This idea was sparked in conversation with patrons who said, 'Wouldn't it be great if there was an artist who could paint a poster like Rockwell did during World War II that would inspire everybody to vote?' And it led me to think -- we can do that," Norman Rockwell Museum Director Laurie Norton Moffatt told CNN.

​The project came together in a matter of six weeks, Norton Moffatt explained, and it was the first time the museum worked with illustrators to commission and publish artwork in a digital format.

"At a time when many of us feel life has closed in, during this pandemic, we found a way to burst those walls wide open and put the museum's work to good in the world by inspiring everyone to vote," Norton Moffatt said.

The posters will be exhibited online and at the museum until Election Day, and physical copies will enter the museum's permanent collection.

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.

​CLEVELAND, OH.- The Cleveland Museum of Art has collected exceptional Chinese paintings since its earliest days and has one of the most distinguished collections in the West. As responsible stewards of these important holdings, the museum has sought to increase the level of Chinese painting conservation expertise within the institution, and in turn throughout the United States. Today, the museum announces a transformative $1.5 million gift from June and Simon K.C. Li to establish a Center for Chinese Paintings Conservation. The Li gift matches a $1.5 million endowment challenge grant awarded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 

“Chinese paintings are a special strength of our collection,” said William Griswold, director of the Cleveland Museum of Art. “While these superb works occupy a critical place in Chinese art history, they also represent a major conservation challenge given the fragile nature of the materials used to create them. The shortage of qualified Chinese paintings conservators is a widespread dilemma faced by museums across the country. The generous gift by June and Simon K.C. Li and challenge grant from the Mellon Foundation will enable solutions that will effect great change in the industry and ensure the care of Chinese paintings for generations to come.” 

​Slate magazine recently launched “Slate 90,” a critical look at tax-exempt organizations as represented by the 10 largest nonprofits in nine nonprofit sectors. Museums on Slate’s target list include the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the National Gallery of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I’m adding this to my file of “weak signals*” of changing attitudes toward the nonprofit sector in the US. And I’m bringing it to your attention because it suggests actions we as a field may collectively take to ensure that museums continue to benefit from tax-exempt status.

The Slate project is only the latest in a series of stories that document changing attitudes towards nonprofits in general and museums in particular. A few years ago, Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah and Chair of the Senate Finance Committee), launched an extended investigation into selected private museums (broadly speaking, museums founded, funded, and to some extent controlled by wealthy art collectors). Questioning whether these organizations actually operate in the public interest, Senator Hatch flagged 502(c)3 status as an “area of our tax code ripe for exploitation.” While his inquiry concluded in 2016, the questions he raised aren’t going away. Just last month Crain’s New York drew attention to The Solow Art and Architecture Foundation, a small museum displaying the collection of billionaire real estate developer Sheldon Solow. Noting that the lack of regular public open hours, Crain’s basically accused Solow of running the museum as a tax avoidance scheme, and took a side swipe at other private museums in the process.

​Fatigued by years of a brutal civil war, divided by racial and economic strife, and fearful that immigrants were coming to take workers’ jobs, the US’s long-term prospects were far from assured in 1867. In that contentious and chaotic environment, Frederick Douglass gave an impassioned speech in Boston about “our composite nation,” arguing for the virtue of a pluralistic United States. He wisely observed: “Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society.”

We find ourselves in a similar trust crisis today, not just in the United States, but around the world. Global confidence in many institutions is at a historic low. In the US, many people have lost faith in the very pillars of American civic identity, such as the government, academia, corporations and the media. There is a sense that these institutions are inadequately responsive to the needs of many. Although 2017 showed a slight uptick in confidence in institutions, of the 14 measured in a recent Gallup poll, only three – the police, the military and small business – ranked higher than 50%.

The former director of the Queens Museum in New York, Laura Raicovich, was celebrated for her political outspokenness. “At Queens Museum, the Director Is as Political as the Art” read the headline of a New York Times profile last October. Less than four months later, Raicovich abruptly announced her resignation. “There are so many big things that art and culture have to contend with that are so wrong in the world,” she told the New York Times. “I just felt that my vision and that of the board weren’t in enough alignment to get that done.”
Raicovich presented the decision to leave as her own; the Queens Museum board later claimed that it forced her, after an independent investigation of her handling of an Israel-sponsored event found that she "knowingly misled the board". Either way, it seems clear that the board did not fully support her activism, including her closure of the museum on Donald Trump’s inauguration day, in step with calls for an “art strike” by prominent artists and critics, to hold a free protest sign-making event instead.

PITTSFIELD — Trustees allowed debate over the Berkshire Museum's financial challenges to snowball into an excessive art sale, two former board members tell The Eagle, as officials backed a costly shift to interactive exhibits based on thin evidence.

Carol Riordan and Nancy Edman Feldman say that while the museum's money problems were real, the Pittsfield institution could have ensured its future with far less than the $55 million it is allowed to raise through sales under terms of an agreement with Attorney General Maura Healey. 

Both fault trustees and Executive Director Van Shields for not doing enough to right the museum's finances through fund appeals and other means.

"I was not going to sell the assets of the organization before trying everything," said Riordan, a Pittsfield resident who served as treasurer of the board of trustees. "I care. I care about the community and I care about the museum."

​When the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) first opened its doors, it was considered a “people’s museum,” a place for the city of Oakland to celebrate the art, history, and natural sciences that shape California’s identity. We’ve maintained those deep ties to our community for nearly half a century and have been guided by the belief that when museums are truly welcoming and inclusive, they make a real difference in the lives of people as well as in the health and vitality of a community.

But do we have any proof to back up that belief? Not yet. How can we articulate that proof in a compelling way to our community of stakeholders? We’re not sure. So thus began our work to measure the social impact of the Oakland Museum of California — an exciting but daunting task. As Deputy Director of the OMCA, I lead the museum’s vision for community engagement and social impact. My colleague Johanna Jones is the Associate Director for Evaluation and Visitor Insights and my co-conspirator for this project. We don’t have the answers, but we are interested in sharing our process as we learn our way into measuring OMCA’s social impact in Oakland.