The Art (Museum) of Leadership

By SETH BATE

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!