Santa Cruz Museum of Art History Play With Color
Nina Simon, the internationally renowned creative strength behind the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, is preparing for a new journey.
In November of concluding year, a startling chip of news emerged from behind the walls of the Museum of Art and History (MAH) when Simon, the organization's dynamic executive director, appear that she was leaving after viii years and a major turnaround at the local art institution. The news sent cultural shock waves throughout the community.
Simon'due south tenure was not without some controversy—it is Santa Cruz, afterwards all—as the 37-year-former Simon pushed more than a few envelopes in traditional museum direction and curating styles during her tenure.
Trained as an engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Constitute in Massachusetts, Simon employed many of the cut-edge ideas she had explored in her innovative blog Museum 2.0 , kickoff book The Participatory Museum and follow-up title The Art of Releva nce. In then doing, she ruffled the feathers of some art and history traditionalists, near a generation or two older than herself.
But even for her critics, it'southward hard to deny that Simon—along with the talented staff she assembled around her, and the community that rallied behind her vision—had turned a floundering, seemingly visionless institution into a thriving, dynamic organization remarkably in tune with the pulse of the greater Santa Cruz customs.
The numbers tell the tale in a rather startling fashion: When Simon assumed her leadership role at MAH, the museum'southward almanac budget was in disastrous shape. Income in 2011 was $630,000, with expenses at $835,000. MAH was headed for defalcation. During the concluding calendar year under Simon'due south tenure, MAH's annual budget was $two.5 one thousand thousand—nearly a 400% increase in little more than viii years—and the MAH was running in the black by roughly $400,000.
Even more significantly, annual attendance at MAH in 2011—and allow us be candid, the place often felt similar a morgue—stood at 17,000 people. By last twelvemonth, attendance had increased about nine-fold, to 148,000 visitors. And possibly most critical of all, the attendance had radically inverse in terms of age, race and income levels.
Simon'southward impact on MAH was most instantaneous. She eliminated a staff position and imposed salary reductions (including for herself), speedily raised $1 million, and assembled a Renewed Appetite Task Force charged with redefining funding goals and identifying growth opportunities. In curt, she moved mountains.
Eight years after, she has decided on a alter in the course of her professional career, forming a separate nonprofit—OF/BY/FOR ALL—that will try to bring MAH's concept of community date to museums and other cultural organizations around the world. With only a short time left at MAH, Simon talked with Proficient Times Senior Contributing Editor Geoffrey Dunn about her accomplishments, where she hopes MAH is headed and the new challenges before her.
It's hard to believe it'southward been eight years since you lot took over the captain of MAH. Has it gone by speedily for you lot, or was it more difficult than it seemed?
NINA SIMON: The time has gone quickly, but it's also fundamentally changed my life. When I started at the MAH, I loved Santa Cruz in the abstruse. Leading the MAH meant embracing Santa Cruz Canton in all its depth and complications. We opened the doors for new people to become involved, and they flooded in. They brought brilliant and kooky ideas. They donated their time and creativity. We hugged and nosotros argued. We started conversations and relationships that volition never end.
I did an extensive interview with you for Proficient Times presently after you took over MAH. I re-read it this week, and i of the things I couldn't assistance but notice was that several, if not virtually, of the goals you envisioned and so have today go a reality. And concepts like 'Museum two.0' and 'interactive encounters' and 'the participatory museum'—which were all rather new and even a piddling vague back so—are now part of the community vernacular. Did you accomplish all, or most, of what yous set out to exercise? And did you expect these ideas to be and so thoroughly embraced by the community at large?
I accomplished most of what I hoped to do—and, well, more. But it wasn't really me that did it. Information technology was our community, which not merely welcomed a new fashion of interacting with a museum, but did then with gusto. Over 8 years, nosotros invited hundreds of thousands of new people—people of every historic period, income level, race, and ethnicity—to come in.
And they weren't just visitors, they were volunteers and collaborators co-creating new exhibitions and events. They were donors and members supporting a new public mission. Some of our most successful programs—and our extraordinary financial growth—are thank you to our partners.
I think the concept of beingness a team thespian is part of your mantra.
There are a lot of museums effectually the globe trying to involve people more actively in how they work. In most cities, a few people get involved, and a lot of people mutter. In Santa Cruz, nosotros had the opposite. A ton of people got involved, and only a few complained. We got further, faster, because the whole spirit of artistic community participation is so shut to the heart of what Santa Cruz County is all near.
Agreed. Given that, what do y'all consider to be your most definitive accomplishments at MAH?
In that location are many internal accomplishments: the fiscal turnaround, edifice a strong and diverse staff and lath, and rebuilding the mission and culture of the institution. Merely externally, I'm well-nigh proud of 3 community projects: the Princes of Surf exhibition [2015], the Lost Childhoods foster youth project [2017], and the reinvention of Abbott Square.
Since I was involved in the 'Princes of Surf' showroom [with partners Kim Stoner, Bob Pearson and Barney Langner] let's beginning there. I know you said that this exhibit had a profound bear upon on you and that, in part, inspired you to write your second book, 'The Art of Relevance.' What was it most that exhibit that proved so pivotal?
It was an exhibition that was truly community-sourced. Kim walked into the MAH office ane day, and afterwards with you, telling this fantastical story about how the offset surfboards ever used on the mainland United statesA. were hidden in storage in Hawaii, and that they were made right here in Santa Cruz. From the very kickoff, that exhibition was driven not just by your group'due south enthusiasm, only by dozens of partners who truly took buying of the project.
A lot of times, organizations volition talk about partnerships in a very transactional or superficial way. But in the instance of Princes of Surf , the partnerships were deep. They took the MAH further than I could ever have imagined. And for me personally, it was a really powerful attestation to what tin happen when an institution gives up command and shares power with passionate community members.
Passions definitely run deep in those communities. I was in the middle of it and was blown abroad not only by the passion, simply too by the breadth of its traction.
What those customs members taught united states was that Princes of Surf was non just an exhibition near surfing. It was an exhibition nigh crossing cultures. I'll never forget the Polynesian biker club that came downward to aid with the large paddle out, and the Hawaiian elder who blessed the boards. These partners brought in new voices and perspectives that enriched the exhibition. They taught me that no 1 owns the story. No i owns the objects. They are a shared heritage that demark us to each other across our differences.
You told me the other solar day that 'Lost Childhoods' as well had a profound impact on you.
That exhibition was our most ambitious attempt to put together all the ways we involve customs at the MAH. We worked with partners—foster youth and advocates—who had no reason to trust united states, or even know nosotros existed. But we built that trust, and nosotros built the exhibition together.
The co-cosmos involved was deep and hard and important. The resulting exhibition told stories that had never been told, coming from voices that had often been silenced. And information technology encouraged visitors not merely to participate, but to take action to help foster youth, and by doing so, make our customs stronger.
In many ways, that was a revolutionary showroom.
The model we created for Lost Childhoods —the "community upshot exhibition"—is now a signature model for the MAH. We wrote a toolkit on how to exercise it and shared it around the earth. Nosotros refined the model once again this year for the current exhibition on seniors and social isolation, Nosotros're Even so Here . The community issue exhibition model was spearheaded by Stacey Marie Garcia, our managing director of community engagement. I think it'due south a game changer for the MAH and for the world of museums. Information technology shows that art and history can spark social action to build stronger, more continued communities. And I know Stacey and the squad will keep doing just that.
What led yous to take on Abbott Square? In some ways that seemed like a stretch.
Six years ago, we started out thinking well-nigh Abbott Square equally a MAH expansion project—a mode to connect the museum to the vibrant creative life of downtown. We'd also learned from a Latinx-focused ethnographic study that outdoor programming was particularly appealing to local Latinx families. We wanted to attain more people, and more diverse people, and we saw Abbott Square as a bully place to exercise it.
And that idea kept evolving.
Once we started community conversations about the potential for Abbott Square, the "why" shifted to community desire for a town square. While locals were interested in the MAH, they were much more than interested in having a downtown gathering place. What started equally being nearly the MAH became more about the community. Customs members' expressed needs and desires collection the planning of Abbott Square and led to major decisions we would non have made if this project was "simply" a MAH extension—the add-on of the food court being the most pregnant. While this was heady, information technology was likewise a bit disconcerting. At times, it felt like we were taking on a new sister project to the MAH in Abbott Foursquare, as opposed to an expansion of our existing work. Some MAH donors questioned whether we were really in the business of building a public plaza and whether nosotros should raise coin to do and then.
That seems like a legitimate question.
To my grateful surprise, that sense of separation resolved itself as the MAH'south strategy evolved in alignment with the project. While we were designing Abbott Square with community members, nosotros were likewise strengthening the MAH'southward overall delivery to build a stronger, more connected customs. We knew this touch on could just happen if we expanded our work further beyond our walls.
I know a lot of people thought it would never happen, that it was a disaster in the making.
Building Abbott Square was intense. We raised $5 million from our community, but we also dealt with hundreds of customs members—including people in power —who simply did not believe the project was possible. Henri Matisse one time said that inventiveness takes courage. We needed a lot of both to get this project done.
Every time I come across moms with strollers meeting up in Abbott Square, or a pack of teens coming down after schoolhouse, I'm reminded how many people didn't believe this was possible. I'one thousand reminded how easy it would have been to requite upwards on this project. But I'm likewise reminded how satisfying and meaningful information technology is to do the impossible. Ane of my accented favorite things to do is to sit down in Abbott Square and picket people detect it for the starting time time. People take adopted it so quickly into the life of downtown, and I'm proud of that.
Some of the changes you imposed on the museum, including Abbott Foursquare, generated criticism, mostly from some of the erstwhile guard types who wanted more traditional explorations of art and history.
Not everyone liked how nosotros, and I, led the MAH. But as a leader, I have to counterbalance those small-scale number of critical voices confronting the hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic people who got newly involved—including many who had never felt welcome in a museum before. For every critic, in that location were literally a thousand new people telling us how grateful they were for the changes. When I think of the loudest critics of our work, I remember of people who wanted the MAH to be a more sectional, elitist, academic place.
I think that'southward the wrong vision for a public institution. I remember information technology'south the wrong vision for Santa Cruz. For a museum to survive and thrive today, it must be relevant and meaningful for many people from many backgrounds. It must sway to the pulse of the cultural community in which it resides. Information technology must exist radically inclusive, constantly working to invite new people to connect for new reasons. That'southward what we tried to do at the MAH.
I retrieve our get-go see nearly a decade agone. One of the things we discussed was the financial situation at the MAH—it was dismal then—and I had seen the annual audits that had been conducted over the last several years. Y'all really turned things effectually in brusque order. And every bit a former executive director of a local nonprofit, I was duly impressed. What was your approach to the money dance?
Nosotros turned effectually apace, and then grew aggressively yr over year. Over time, nosotros quadrupled the budget and built salubrious reserves for the first time in the system's history. Nosotros did it in 3 steps. First, nosotros made hard cuts, scaling dorsum to a core operation we could sustain. Then, nosotros started doing new things with spit and duct tape to give people a glimpse of what we hoped to create. Finally, nosotros asked those who were intrigued to invest and help united states of america build a new kind of museum.
It was a radically new mode of seeking resources.
We brought in millions in new funding from ii major sources: national foundations, which saw the MAH every bit an innovative leader in the cultural sector, and local donors who care about making Santa Cruz Canton better. Nigh of these local donors were younger and more social justice-oriented than traditional museum supporters. I didn't solicit people who wanted to see their favorite artist on the wall. I worked with donors who saw art and history as vehicles to strengthen and connect our community. It turns out in that location are a lot of people who care about our community and who believe that creative, new approaches can help us grow. The MAH's unique customs-driven model, and our incredibly diverse participants, makes it a identify where they desire to contribute.
So why leave the MAH now?
While I wouldn't say I've done everything I could do at the MAH, I do feel like I've taken it from a place of instability to a place of richness and maturity. I knew I could do a lot of good at the MAH when it needed change and new energy. Now it has such wonderful energy, such astonishing people. I know they—and a new director—volition go along growing. The MAH is stiff, and frankly, I think at that place's another leader out there who can do more than with its forcefulness than I tin can.
In what ways is your farewell to MAH a new kickoff for you lot?
I've spent the past eight years in a passionate honey affair with Santa Cruz, doing piece of work that is deep, local, and unbounded. In that location are no divisions for me between piece of work and life. Information technology'due south all a commemoration of what it ways to build community here in Santa Cruz Canton. Every forenoon when I unlock the museum, I feel like I'm diving into the heart of a web of beauty and variety and unexpected connections. It will exist a profound loss to no longer be tied into that spider web of dearest. Merely I'1000 gear up to launch free and then I can spread that love to other places. Over the past several years, I've learned how hungry people are for institutions that are truly public, where they tin can connect and abound together. Nosotros've done that at the MAH, and I'm eager to share what nosotros've learned with colleagues leading public institutions effectually the world.
The Museum of Art & History will celebrate Nina Simon's eight years every bit executive managing director this coming First Friday (June seven), from 5-9 p.m., with an hr of special acknowledgements first at vii p.g.. 705 Front end St., Santa Cruz. santacruzmah.org. For more on Simon'due south next chapter, visit ofbyforall.org.
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Source: https://www.goodtimes.sc/cover-stories/nina-simon-reinvented-art-santa-cruz/
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