By SETH BATE
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| Nelson-Atkins w/"Shuttlecocks" by Claes Oldenburg and Coosie van Bruggen. Photo credit: Frankphotos |
If you’re going to be
at the Kansas Museums Association 2012 conference http://ksmuseums.org/category/conference , please look for the session Amy Delamaide and I are presenting on
(Re)Energizing Volunteers at 11 a.m. Oct. 25. See you there!
Oct. 24-26, I will be attending the Kansas Museums
Association annual conference in Newton. That means it has been a year since I
heard a keynote address by Julián Zugazagoitia, director and CEO of the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art http://www.nelson-atkins.org/
, at last year’s conference. It really stuck with me.
At the time, Zugazagoitia was a year into his position, and
he was speaking about the state of the museum world and the new challenges and
opportunities he was facing. He didn’t say he was there to talk about
leadership, but he did.
Exercising leadership requires inspiring a collective purpose. Zugazagoitia asked his audience to
let go of an outmoded purpose for museums, simply preserving contents in
pristine condition. Instead, he spoke of museums as “places to produce
innovation” and “incubators of new realities.”
Zugazagoitia was skilled at speaking to loss. To raise the aspirations and the quality of
museums, he said, means inviting visitors who may not be well-versed in art,
history or science to be participants in conversation, not just consumers of
knowledge. That represents a sacrifice for people who have devoted their lives
to museum work. “The notion of maybe no longer being the only authority is the
greatest challenge for us,” he acknowledged.
Even though people are passionate about museums,
conversations about them tend to be exceedingly polite. Stop censoring
yourself, Zugazagoitia said. “I love
candor. Self-regulation is not the way to make a difference.” Or as I might say
to a leadership coaching client, get
over “Kansas nice.”
Most of his presentation was about the need for change, but
Zugazagoitia also showed the ability to start
where “they” are. In this case, “they” was the people who love the museum
he directs. He promised them that its core identity will stay the same. “There
are some values that will never change at the Nelson-Atkins,” he said.
Of all the leadership lessons Zugazagoitia shared, whether
he intended to or not, perhaps the most important one is that finding a solution requires learning and
experimentation. For a new director in a high-profile position, he was
remarkably calm about not knowing exactly how his museum would navigate the
changing environment. “Perhaps in not having the answer,” he said, “I am
looking for the answer.”
If you love museums—or a particular museum—I hope to see you
at this year’s conference. I can’t wait to find out what we hear this time that
will stick with us for the next year!
