By Mary Baily Wieler, MTA President

Last month’s Tips for Trustees post conveyed the importance of having a board composition that embodies diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI). This month, we turn to DEAI-focused talent management and recruitment policies for your museum’s staff and the board’s role in setting this as a strategic priority.
​
Having a staff that embodies diversity, equity, access and inclusion is essential to ensuring that your museum’s daily operations include and welcome your community, as well as helping to grow and support a changing talent pool. Board meetings rarely devote time to human resource matters as that is the role of the Director and staff to implement.  To move DEAI forward to a board agenda item, the board can review your museum’s strategic plan and make sure that it addresses recruitment policies and hiring practices that supports the museum’s goals. To start the conversation, the board can ask the staff to supply baseline employee demographic data, compare it to recent census data and then work together to set targets to achieve over time the desired workforce composition.

As your board strives for DEAI, also consider reviewing compensation policies as a part of your strategic resources plan. Only by ensuring that fair compensation is included in the budget can you expect to have a financially stable staff, which is essential for their satisfaction and willingness to stay long-term. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating the cost savings of long-term employees versus high staff turnover. To help set compensation policies, the board and staff can consider the recent salary surveys published by AAM (purchase) and AAMD (free) as well as costs of living in the area (see MIT’s living wage calculator here). In a time where many young people entering the field are burdened with student debt, ensuring that your museum’s salaries can reasonably cover their expenses is essential to opening your doors to applicants from different backgrounds and economic classes.

Transparent job descriptions also can help your museum recruit a more diverse candidate pool; conveying salary ranges, benefits, and time commitments in job postings can help the museum to attract the right applicants and save everyone time during the interview and hiring process. There are growing trends for job boards to give priority to positions that state compensation packages, so not including this could make your museum’s postings get lost in the shuffle and decrease your chances that a wide range of star applicants will apply.

Being realistic and up front about job requirements is essential in finding 21st century talent for your museum. This is all part of a strong DEAI-focused talent management plan. While your human resource managers will handle the details of recruitment and hiring, the board can set policies and supply realistic budgets that will ensure that the right applicants find their way to you. Transparency about your museum’s needs and a realistic perspective of the museum field’s workforce are essential to your success.
 
MTA members can access additional resources in our Online Resource Library, such as Diversity in the New York City Cultural Affairs Community and Arts Consulting Group’s The Three Sides of Organizational Diversity. Additionally, this article is a resource on gender equity in the museum workplace. 

At the Museum Trustee Association, we often speak on the importance of having a diverse board and the steps that you can take to improve your board’s composition.
 
Defined in AAM’s recent report Facing Change: Insights from AAM’s Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion Working Group as “all the ways that people are different and the same at the individual and group levels,” diversity is not just a matter of ethnic background. Economic class, gender, age, and family status are important factors, as are areas of expertise, skills, and personality styles.
 
Keeping track of all of these factors can be a challenge, especially considering the number of board members you may have. MTA does not recommend a specific number of board members; rather, we encourage you to evaluate your museum’s community, needs, and influencers when determining the number of seats at your board table.
 
So how do you keep track of all of these factors? Self-identification is a great first step. Your museum’s director or board liaison may not be able to identify the accurate categorizations for every one of your board members. In MTA’s Building Museum Boards, part of our Templates for Trustees series, we encourage board members to fill out and submit to their museum an Individual Board Member Profile. This gives board members the opportunity to provide their own information, which lets them choose how they will be categorized by the museum in the board matrix.
 
The Individual Board Member Profile comes pre-populated with demographic questions to collect data on everything from the number of volunteer hours someone can contribute to board member’s areas of influence in the community. Everything in this template can be customized, so you are able to add additional categories depending on your areas of concern. The online application portion of Building Museum Boards compiles this information and creates charts and graphs to help Directors, Chairs, and the full board to see trends and gaps in board diversity.
 
Taking the time to gather accurate information and compile it in a digestible way is an essential step towards evaluating and improving your board’s diversity.
 
As you consider your current board, your ideal board, and the steps you need to take to bridge gaps between the two, keep the DEAI definitions in mind. Summer is a great time for boards and staff to work together to plan their next board cycle.
 
Diversity: all the ways that people are different and the same at individual and group levels.

Equity: fair and just treatment of all members of a community.

Accessibility: providing equitable access to everyone, regardless of their abilities and experience.

Inclusion: the intentional, ongoing effort to value and respect all individuals, as well as making consistent efforts to include diverse individuals in your circle. 

Even with the judge's final ruling on the Berkshire Museum’s deaccessioning case released last week, discussions of ethics, compromise, and stewardship are still swirling. Martin Gammon, President of Pergamon Art Group, will take trustees on a deep dive into the topic at MTA’s Friday Forum later this month.
 
Much of the deaccessioning debate has been fueled by precedents – cases of deaccessioning that were successes or failures - and the history of smart moves or missteps on the part of trustees.
 
Gammon’s new book, Deaccessioning and Its Discontents, is a critical history of collections deaccessioning by museums. Read on for a few excerpts from Gammon’s book that share a few of the precedents for the Berkshire Museum case.
 
The now defunct Finch College’s decision to auction their collection in order to cover operating costs and financial obligations: read more.
 
The George F. Harding Museum’s art sales and the attorney general’s response: read more.
 
The Heye Foundation’s struggles with self-dealing, trustee discounts, and the attorney general: read more. Some of the items in question were eventually returned to the Foundation and later joined the Smithsonian’s collection at the Museum of the American Indian.
 
Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum and the shifting curatorial rationale for instances of deaccessioning: read more.

MTA’s Friday Forum will take place at the Mingei International Museum on Friday, April 27th. Spots are still available – register today.

​

​At the Museum Trustee Association, we know that museums are essential to the educational and economic success of our communities. Once a year, through the American Alliance of Museums’ Museums Advocacy Day, museums speak with one voice on Capitol Hill to our elected officials, and MTA staff and board members once again were a vital part of AAM’s Museums Advocacy Day, highlighting museums trustees’ role in making the case for museums.
 
The results of AAM’s 2017 Public Opinion Survey demonstrate overwhelming support for museums:

•  97% of Americans believe that museums are educational assets for their communities
• 96% would think positively of their elected officials taking legislative action to support museums

We encourage you to attend Museums Advocacy Day in person, but there is also a lot you can do to be an effective advocate locally: schedule a visit with your officials when they are home for recess, or better yet, invite them on a tour of your museum.  Ongoing and consistent efforts in advocacy can happen throughout the year when you identify a board committee to be accountable for planning and leading periodic visits with elected officials. Designate a member of your board to follow your representatives on social media, and foster an ongoing relationship with them. Click these links to identify your Senators and Congressional Representatives.
 
In preparing for meetings with your legislators, take note of the recently released Museums as Economic Engines report (easily downloaded from the AAM website). The report shows the incredible economic impact made by museums: $50 billion per year to the national economy; 726,000 jobs; 850 million visitors annually. Also, check out the economic impact of museums in your state so that you can share specific data with your state and local representatives.
 
Museums are considered by their communities to be invaluable assets and U.S. citizens invest over one million hours of volunteer time in museums each year. This statistic alone demonstrates the passion we have for museums, and the recent compelling data from AAM lends strength to our requests for support from government representatives.
 
Guiding points for your meetings can include encouraging reauthorization of the Institute of Museums and Library Services’ Office of Museum Services and advocating for a universal charitable deduction. We encourage you to share poignant and personal stories that demonstrate the value of museums to you and in your community.

We are delighted to share that MTA’s Membership Committee Chair Margaret Benjamin was honored with a 5-year advocacy award. Congratulations, Margaret!

As you may recall, in 2016 I worked with Robyn Peterson, now Director of the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, in creating an “ideal” Board Orientation Handbook. Two years later, I decided to revisit this topic.

One of the key components of a successful onboarding for new board members is an orientation day on which the “new class” is introduced to all aspects of the museum. In the past, we have emphasized the importance of the Board Orientation Handbook, given to each new board member at the beginning of their term.

While the Board Orientation Handbook is a useful tool, it does not need to be restricted to a static physical document anymore. There have been a number of changes in the way that boards process information. Board portals and cloud based resources are becoming more and more prevalent, and as a result, the Board Orientation Handbook can be a dynamic document used long into a board member’s career. As you prepare to launch into your new board year, I would encourage you to evaluate how your staff disseminates information to your board.

A number of the documents listed in the sample table of contents below can exist as fluid documents with periodic updates. Sharing these documents with your entire board in a digital format, such as a portal or shared drive, allows for easy updates and eliminates the confusion of conflicting duplicate documents.

Have you used any interesting techniques in building your board orientation handbooks? Let us know in the comments below.

The Cultural Property Policy Environment

Over the past several years, the debate over how best to protect the World’s cultural heritage has taken a turn.  Although no evidence of any significant problem has been found, fear of terrorist funding from trade in cultural objects has replaced genuine concern for cultural heritage preservation as the driving force for new regulations.  [1] [2]  Unsupported claims that trade in objects of cultural heritage, mainly antiquities, is a major source of terrorist funding have prompted a politically driven rush toward legislative imposition of civil and criminal penalties and have encouraged aggressive enforcement.  In spite of numerous studies and policy recommendations to the contrary, dissenting voices are being scolded into silence for being soft on terrorism.  All methods of fighting terrorism should be considered, but we must not let fear or political agendas drive us to adopt measures that do more harm than good.  If policy making continues in the current direction the impact on museums, their staffs, donors, trustees and, ultimately, their ability to serve the public will be permanent and severely damaging.   It is time for Museums and their Boards to take action.
 
Initial claims of billions of dollars in terrorist funding from sales of artifacts have been discredited, but this has not prevented these claims from being used to justify stricter regulation and enforcement such as the new German law and the European Treaty of Nicosia.  However, recent evidence and studies [3] suggest revenue to ISIS may be no more than a few hundred thousand from sale of “excavation permits” within their now rapidly shrinking territory. Nevertheless, these exaggerated claims of terrorist funding[4] have now been repeated so often that they are accepted as fact [5], and are having a profound effect on policy making.   The US has passed into law new restrictions on Syrian artifacts and created a new investigatory committee.[6]  A new EU treaty [7]  (Nicosia, May 2017), justified largely by these discredited claims that antiquities sales are providing funding for terrorists, recognizes the laws of source countries as the exclusive means of determining an object’s legal status.  The treaty provides for enforcement and criminal penalties based on these foreign laws regardless of whether they have been shown to be valid or constitutional within the EU or whether they are even enforced in the source country.  Once codified into law it will create substantial legal risks for museums, their staffs and the trade. 
 
Germany has enacted a controversial law[8] [9] requiring export licenses and proof of legal source country exportation and declares anything without proper documentation to be presumptively illegal.  The Terrorism Art and Antiquity Revenue Prevention Act of 2016 (S.3449, TAAR Act) introduced in the US Senate, but now tabled, would classify as stolen any cultural property removed in violation of the local laws of the source country and would empower the Dept. of Homeland Security to create a database and labeling system for Syrian and Iraqi artifacts. [10]  Trump’s Presidential Memos and Executive Orders targeting ISIS and terrorism[11] [12] [13] have encouraged proposals for more regulation, new enforcement initiatives and more criminal prosecutions.  
 
Recent testimony before Congress and Homeland Security[14] [15] also continues to cite sale of artifacts as a major source of terrorist funding claiming that individual objects sell for, “…as much as $1 Million…” and implying that terrorists are directly participating at the highest levels of the antiquities market despite a complete lack of evidence.  Since 2015 the US Department of State has offered a $5 million reward for information that disrupts these alleged activities . [16] No one has yet claimed the reward.[17]

 
Museum’s Ability To Serve The Public: At Risk?
 
Museums should be an essential part of any international effort to protect the world’s cultural heritage.  But, as the focus of regulators has turned almost solely to defeating terrorism, museums have been marginalized and the goal of actually preserving world cultural heritage for future generations seems to be receding into the background.
 
The risks are real.  By imposing retroactive requirements for source country export documentation, the new EU Treaty and German laws instantly create millions of orphaned objects already in the EU which, after implementation, cannot be legally exported, sold, gifted or, in Germany, owned.  What will happen to all those objects?  How will museums or families feel about suddenly being deemed criminals simply for owning them?  Should the US revive the TAAR Act, the same thing could happen here.
 
Criminal penalties mandated by the EU Treaty probably sound good to voters worried about terrorism or concerned about cultural heritage preservation but does it really make sense to threaten museum staffers with jail time if they made a mistake in their provenance research?  The new EU Treaty requires laws that say it’s a crime to make a mistake if you “should have known”. [18] Will museums decide to make no accessions at all rather than that take that kind of risk?  And, who will be willing to serve as a Trustee when it exposes them to the possibility of criminal prosecution?
 
In the absence of strong voices from the museum community we are permitting the creation of a world with less transparency, more cultural property abuses, millions of refugee objects and enormous risks for museum staff, trustees and collectors.  We are in real danger of permanently damaging the ability of the museum system to serve the public and eliminating the opportunity for our society to view, understand and appreciate the World’s many diverse artistic traditions. 
 
In such an environment, no set of internal policies will completely protect an institution from cultural property disputes or accusations.  We can, however, operate transparently with clear ethical guidelines that support both the protection of cultural heritage and our ability to pursue our public mission.  We must also fight for a seat at the policy making table and become an integral part of the process rather than being victimized by it.

About the Author

Matthew Polk is a trustee of the Walters Art Museum and a former trustee of the Baltimore Museum of Art.  He currently serves on the Collections and Finance Committees of the Walters and on the AAAPI Accessions committee of the BMA. He is also a board member of the Committee for Cultural Policy and a co-founder of the Global Heritage Alliance, organizations dedicated to formulation of cultural property policies which serve both the need for preservation and the public interest. In 2009 he and his wife, Amy Gould FAIA, established the Historic Textile Research Foundation (HTRF), a 501 c(3) dedicated to radiocarbon dating of historically significant textiles for research purposes.

Mr. Polk is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy (’71) and serves on the department’s advisory board and executive committee. In 1971 he co-founded Polk Audio and served as Chairman and head of product development until 2006. In 2009 he began developing a new method for high intensity acoustic vibration testing of spacecraft and in 2016 co- founded MSI DFAT Services, LLC, the leading provider of direct field acoustic testing services for aerospace. 

Note: The Museum Trustee Association views its mission of enhancing the effectiveness of museum trustees as educational and collaborative. As a group of past and current museum board members, we do not see ourselves as a policy-setting organization but rather as a source of information to equip Museum Trustees as they implement field-wide best practices in all of their governance affairs. The article above is intended to provide an opportunity for open dialogue.
 

Footnotes
[1] “Legislators seem to be very busy with drafting laws to combat cultural property crimes, combat IS and specifically the ways IS earns money. Legislators seem to be more occupied with the topic than law enforcement, but no unequivocal proof of huge revenues of the illegal trade in cultural property is found that could support such an active legislative role – besides political reasons. Large amounts of plundered items have not surfaced on Western (art) markets”  Dutch Survey on Cultural Property War Crimes, Sept. 2016, section 14.2.3 page 65, http://iadaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Cultural-Property-War-crimes-and-Islamic-State-2016.pdf
[2]  Excellent discussion in the New Yorker, Dec. 2015 , https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-real-value-of-the-isis-antiquities-trade
[3] Dutch study most comprehensive yet. “Based on this study it can be concluded that the topic is ‘hyped’. It is a strategic political topic that is presented bigger than it is in reality.” Pg. 6,http://iadaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Cultural-Property-War-crimes-and-Islamic-State-2016.pdf  See page 63-65 for summary and conclusions.
[4] Inside ISIS’ Looted Antiquities Trade: “…why $7 billion fell to $4 million in public discussions about the ISIS antiquities trade.”  https://theconversation.com/inside-isis-looted-antiquities-trade-59287
[5] Q&A on proposed EU regulations, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-1954_en.htm “Another study [reference not provided] suggests that the total financial value of the illegal antiquities and art trade is larger than any other area of international crime except arms trafficking and narcotics and has been estimated at €2.5 - €5 billion yearly.” For comparison, the 2014 TEFAF market report estimated the entire world-wide antiquities market at $150M to $200M.
[6] H.R.1493 - Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act  https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1493
[7] 127th Session of the Committee of Ministers
(Nicosia, 19 May 2017) Council of Europe Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Propertyhttps://search.coe.int/cm/Page/result_details.aspx?ObjectId=0900001680704b30
[8]http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/germany-act-to-protect-cultural-property-passed/
[9] Note that as of 2008 exports of nearly all cultural property to non-EU countries already require licenses,http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:039:0001:0007:en:PDF
[10] TAAR Act  https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/3449/text
[11] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/plan-defeat-islamic-state-iraq
[12] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13773
[13] Comprehensive Strategy to Destroy ISIS Act of 2017 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1785/text
[14] Hearing: “The Exploitation of Cultural Property: Examining Illicit Activity in the Antiquities and Art Trade” http://docs.house.gov/committee/calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=106166
[15]FOLLOWING THE MONEY: EXAMINING CURRENT TERRORIST FINANCING TRENDS AND THE THREAT TO THE HOMELAND  https://homeland.house.gov/hearing/following-money-examining-current-terrorist-financing-trends-threat-homeland/
[16] http://thehill.com/policy/defense/255442-us-offers-5-million-reward-to-stop-isis-from-plundering-antiquities
[17] In spite of a lack of credible evidence of any significant terrorist funding from cultural objects reaching the US, organisations like the “Antiquities Coalition” continue to argue for the elimination of all trade in antiquities as an effective means of fighting terrorism. https://theantiquitiescoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/rsz_1rsz_1rsz_conflictantiquities_170713-01-1.png ,  As the Dutch study on Cultural Property War Crimes concluded, “It would contribute to effective investigations if  “UNESCO, media agencies and other agencies [would] stop ‘hyping’ cultural property crimes……” section 15.1, page 65, http://iadaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Cultural-Property-War-crimes-and-Islamic-State-2016.pdf
[18] See Chapter II, Article 7-2 and Article 8-2, http://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/rms/0900001680710435

Our August blog post on deaccessioning from collections engendered strong opinions on all sides of the issue. Thank you to those of you who weighed in via phone call, blog comment, LinkedIn, Facebook, or email for being a part of the discussion. It was especially reassuring that several of our readers expressed an interest in participating in a Fiscal SWAT Team with MTA. These conversations were especially fruitful, and we look forward to implementing this program in the future.

Regardless of your stance on the volatile issue of deaccessioning, it can be agreed that good governance requires both the careful collections stewardship and the execution of fiduciary responsibility. An effective board sees and responds to the first signs of financial trouble within their institution and promptly deals with those problems long before the controversial issue of deaccessioning arises. Are you beginning to see red ink on your balance sheet? Is your audience declining? Does your museum routinely defer maintenance for “just one more year”? Is your staff anxiously waiting for a single big check to keep the lights on? If you answered yes to any of these questions, the time to act is now. Don’t wait until it is too late to seek help. MTA’s Board and Staff are available to assist and to connect you to the resources that your museum needs.

As an organization with an educational mission, we rely on our semi-annual Forums to be our most significant arena for discussion. Deaccessioning and Fiscal Responsibility will be a topic at one or more of our 2018 Forums. Mark your calendar- next year’s event schedule is available now!

Can’t make it to San Diego or Hartford? Our Tips for Trustees blog has become a valuable resource to the field. In November, we will be working with our partners to develop a series of Tips that take a closer look at the early warning signs preceding fiscal crisis, and create ways to address them effectively. We look forward to your continued enthusiastic discussion.

We have occupied a front-row seat for seeing the gap between boards that are well run and led and are boons to the organizations they serve, and those that are far less so. We have seen how public agencies and governance activists have sought to close that gap by insisting on tougher rules and tighter regulations. We believe, however, that much of the variance stems instead from a very different source: the human dynamics, social architecture, and leadership of the board itself.
 
We seek as a result to focus attention on building more engaged leadership in the boardroom, not just the executive suite. Governing boards should take more active leadership of the organization, whether a corporation, hospital, or museum, not just monitor its management. We expand the working concept of governance from one of arms-length oversight to trustee leadership of the most strategic decisions.
 
Rather than being concerned with whether trustees should serve staggered or limited terms, we worry more about whether the chair can help direct the board in guiding strategy, setting the ethical tone, and gauging risk in concert with the chief executive, and whether the trustees’ talent and collective chemistry make the board a substantive player at the table. This calls for a different kind of vigilance in the boardroom, a deeper kind of relationship between trustees and executives, and a new kind of leadership from both.
 
The emerging governance model is a result of forces not of its own making. In the private sector, increased regulation, ownership pressures, and governance reforms over the past decade have been intended to strengthen the board’s oversight function. Yet as boards have become better monitors, they have also become better leaders, delving into a host of other areas that had been delegated to top management in earlier times.
 
We believe that directors in the private sector and trustees in the non-profit community can and will more actively lead in the years ahead, and on balance we anticipate that this should fortify their organization’s success and performance. But that is not a given. Poorly handled, this new enablement can cause serious damage, resulting in fractured authority and dangerous meddling.
 
A New Model of Collaborative Leadership
 
In a 2002 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffett lamented his multiple derelictions of duty as a director of some forty corporations over nearly two decades: “Too often I was silent when management made proposals that I judged to be counter to the interest of shareholders,” Buffett wrote. “In those cases, collegiality trumped independence [and a] certain social atmosphere presides in boardrooms where it becomes impolitic to challenge the chief executive.”
 
A decade later, biopharmaceutical Amgen Inc. CEO Kevin Sharer painted an almost opposite picture of the relationship between the governing body and corner office: “You’re a lion tamer and they’re the lions. Respect them, but if you let them eat you, they will. Working with the board is vital, complex, and beyond your prior experience—unlike anything you’ve done before. It is among the most complex human relationships, especially if you’re the chair, when you’re their boss, and they’re your boss. Get the relationship right, or it will hurt you.”
 
Allow for a little hyperbole on both sides—Warren Buffett was never that neglectful, and Kevin Sharer carried neither whip nor chair to keep his directors at bay. Still, the difference between the two observations illustrates a striking reconfiguration taking place in how boards operate and how directors and trustees work with top management: the emergence, in an extraordinarily short time, of the potential for boards to be a vital partner and new force in governance.
 
But note the qualifier—potential. This leadership capacity has yet to be fully exploited or even realized at many firms. Too often, directors and trustees remain one of the most valuable but least utilized of an organization’s assets. Smart, experienced, and dedicated men and women are ready to serve. They are sworn to protect and advance the enterprise, to ensure that it does what is best for customers, investors, donors, and visitors. Yet their wisdom and guidance are still too often closeted in the boardroom.
 
But the prevailing model is changing, and quickly. At organization after organization, boards and management have been embracing new practices that help define a more directive, more collaborative leadership of the enterprise. They are jointly taking charge of strategic choices, merger decisions, risk tolerance, ethical climate, and other functions that have traditionally been the province of management.

Boards That Monitor, Partner and Take Charge

A company, hospital, or museum’s executives are no less in the driver’s seat. But the way that they steer many organization is now markedly different—a shared or distributed leadership model that is better suited, in our view, for guiding enterprises that are facing more uncertain, more changing, and more complex markets.
 
Each board will want to fashion its own unique blend of the components of direct and collaborative leadership. “Boards should sit down” annually, urged Ford Motor Company’s lead director Irvine Hockaday, “and say, OK, what are we really doing here, what really is our role given the situation of this company at this time, what are we doing to incarnate that role, how are we going to function with the lead director, and what are our priorities?”
 
Finding the right balance among the board’s leadership components—knowing when to lead, when to partner, and when to stay out of the way—has become one of the premier tasks of the board’s leadership of any enterprise.