al goal > legit oceed? of the ich for and. ‘Chapter 3: Strategy and Ettectiveness Visitors to the campus were always shown the University ‘Ar Museum, of which the large and distinguished univer- sity was very proud. A photograph of the handsome nei classical building that housed the museum had long been used by the university for the cover of its brochures and caval The building, together with a substantial endowment, was given to the university around 1929 by an alumnus, the son of the university's first president, who had become very wealthy as an investment banker. He also gave the uni versity his own small, but high-quality, collections—one of Teruscan figurines, and one, wtique in America, of English pre-Raphaelite paintings. He then served as the museum's unpaid director until his death. During hs tenure he brought 2a few additional collections tw the museum, largely from other alumni of the university. Only rarely did the museum ppurchase anything. As a result, the museum housed several small collections of uneven quality. As long as the founder fan the museum, none ofthe collections was ever shown to anybody except a few members of the university's art history faculty, who were adit as ic founder's private guest After the founder's death, in the mid-1940s, the university intended to bring in @ professional museum di rector. Indeed, this had been past of the agreement under which the founder had given the museum, A search com- mittee was to be appointed, but in the meantime a gradu: ave student in art history, who had shows interest in the ‘museum and who had spent a good many hours in it, took lover temporarily. At frst, Miss Kickoff did not even have tie, let alone @ salary. She stayea vu acing, as the muse tum’s director, and over the next 30 years was promoted in stages to that ttle. But from the frst day, whatever her t tl he was in charge. She immediately st abuut changing the museum altogether. She cataloged the collections. She Pursued new gifts, again primarily small collections from alumni and other friends of the university. She organized fund raising for the museum, but above all she began to ineegrate the museum into the work of the university When a space problem arose due to increased enol: ments and the addition of new professors, Miss Kirkoff offered the third floor of the museum to the art history faculty, which moved ite offices there, She remodeled the building to include classrooms and a modern and well Appointed auditorium. She raised funds to build one of the best research and referen. country. She also began to organize a series of special exhi- bitions buile around one of the museum's own collections, ‘omplemented by loans from outside collections. For each Of these exhibitions, she had a distinguished member of the university's art faculty write a catalog, These catalogs Speedy hecame the leading scholarly texts in the fields libraries in ast history it he Miss Kirkoff ran the University Art Museum for almost half a century. At the age of 68, after suffering a severe stroke, she had to retire. In her letter of resignation she proudly pointed to the museum’s growth and accomplish: ‘ment under her stewardship. “Our endowment,” she wrote, }0W compares favorably with museums several times our size. We never have had to ask the university for any money other than our share of the university's insurance policies, (Our collections in the areas of our strength, while small, are of first-rate quality and importance. Above all, we are be- ing used by more people than any museum of our size. Out lecture series, in which members of the university's art his tory faculty present a major subject to a university audience of students and faculty, attracts regularly 300 t0 500 peo- ple; and if we had the seating capacity, we could easily have a larger audience. Our exhibitions are seen and studied by ‘more visitors, most of them members of the university com- ‘munity, than all but the most highly publicized exhibitions in the very big museums ever draw. Above all, the courses and seminars offered in the museum have become one of ‘the most popular and most rapidly growing educational features of the university. No other museum in this country or anywhere else,” concluded Miss Kirkoff, “has so suc cessfully integrated art into the life of a major university and a major university into the work of a museum.” Miss Kirkoff strongly recommended that the university bring in a professional museum director as her successor. “The museum is much too big and much too important to be entrusted to another amateur such as I was 45 years ago,” she wrote. “And it needs careful thinking regarding, its direction, its basis of support, and its future relationship with the university.” The university took Miss Kirkotf’s advice, A search committee was duly appointed and, after one year’s work, it produced a candidate whom everybody approved. The candidate was himself a graduate of the university who had then obtained his Ph.D. in att history and in museum work from the university. Both his teaching and his admin. istrative record were sound, leading to his current muscum directorship in a medium-sized city. There he converted an old, well-known, but rather sleepy museum into a lively, community-oriented museum whose exhibitions were well Publicized and attracted large crowds, The new museum director took over with great fanfare In September 1998. Less than three years later he left-— with less fanfare, but still with considerable noise. Whether he resigned or was fired was not quite clear. But that there owas biterness on both sides was only too obvious. The new director, upon his arrival, had announced that he looked upon the museum as a “major community resuurce” and intended to “make the tremendous artisticand scholarly resources of the museum fully available to the academic community as w ic.” When terview with the college news- paper, everybody nodded in approval. It soon became that what he n ell as co the pul he said these things in an ‘community resource” and the faculty and students understood by these words not the same. The museum had always been “open to the public” but, in practice, it was members of the col- lege community who used the museum and attenided its lectures, its exhibitions, and its frequent semina The first thing the new ditector did, however, was to promote visits from the public schools in the area. He soon began to change the exhibition policy. Instead of orga small shows, focused on @ major collection of t izing and built around a scholarly catalog, he began to organize “popular exhibitions” around “topics of general interest” such as “Women Artists through the Ages.” He promoted these exhibitions vigorously inthe newspapers, in radio and \clevision interviews, and, above all, in the local schools. AS a result, what had been a busy but quiet place was soon knee-deep with schoolchildren, taken to the museum in special buses that cluttered the access roads around the museum and throughout the campus. The faculty, which was not particularly happy with the resulting noise and confusion, became thoroughly upset when the scholarly old chairman of the art history department was mobbed by fourth graders who sprayed him with their water pistols as he tried to fa his way through che main hall to his office. singly, the new director did not design his own shows, but brought in traveling exhibitions from major museums, importing their catalog a his own faculty produce one The students, too, were apparently une the firs gic or eight months, during which ¢ had been somewhat of a camy classes and seminars held at as did ateendan: rather than have thusiastic after he new directo s hero. Attendance at the e art museum fell off sharply, at the evening lectures. When the editor of the campus newspaper interviewed students for a story fon the museum, he was told again and again that the mu- seum had become too dents to € visy and too “sensational” for stu lasses and to have a chance to lear. What brought all this to a head was an Islamic art ex hibit in late 2000, Since the museum had lite Islamic art, no body criticized the showing of a traveling exhibit, offered on very advantageous terms with generous financial assistance from some of the Arab governments. But then, instead of in- viting one of the university’s own faculty members to deliver we customary talk atthe opening ofthe exhibit, the brought ina cultural attaché of one ofthe Arab einbasses in ‘Washington. A week late, the university senate decided to appoint an advisory committe, drawn mostly from members of the art history faculty, which, in the future, would have to approve all plans for exhibits and lectures. The direc tor thereupon, in an interview with the campus newspaper, sharply attacked the faculty a¢ aliier® and “enab Part 2: Organizational Strategy and Structure as believing that “art belongs to the rich.” Six months laer, in June 2001, his resignation was announced, Under the bylaws of che university, the academic sen: ate appoints a search committee. Normally, this is pure formality, The chairperson of the appropriate department submits the department's nominees for the committee who are approved and appointed, usually without debate. But when the academic senate early the following semester was asked ro appoint the search committee, things were far from “normal.” The dean who presided, sensing the tem. pers in the room, tried to smooth over things by saying, “Clearly, we picked the wrong person the last time. We will have to try very hard to find the right one this time.” He was immediately interrupted by an economist, known for his populism, who broke in and said “I admit chat the late director was probably not the right personality. But strongly believe that his personality was not a the root of problem. He tried to do what needs doing, and this got him in trouble with the faculty. Hie tried to make our museum a ‘community resource, to bring in the community and to make art accessible to broad masses of people, to African Ameri cans and Hispanics, to the kids from the ghetto schools and ‘olay public. And this is what we really resented, Maybe his ‘methods were not the most tactful ones—I admit I could have done without those interviews he gave. But what he tried to ddo was right. We had better commit ourselves to the policy hhe wanted to put into effec, or else we will have deserved his attacks on us as ‘elitist’ and “snobbish,” “This is nonsense,” cut in the usually silent and polite senate member from the art history faculty. “It makes ab- solutely no sense for our museum to become the kind of nd my distinguished colleague want it to be. Firs, there is no need. The city has one of the world’s finest and biggest museums, and it does exactly that and does it very well. Secondly, we have nei ther the artistic resources nor the financial resources to serve the community at large. We can do something different but equally important and indeed unique. Ours isthe only mu: seum in the country, and perhaps in the world, that is fully integrated with a community resource our late director a academic community and truly a teaching institution. We are using it, or at least we used to until the last few unfortunate years, as a major educational resource for all our students. No other museum in the country, and as far as I know in the world, is bringing undergraduates into are the way we do. All of us, in addition o our scholarly and graduate work, tach undergraduate courses for people who are not going to be art majors or art historians. We work with the engineering students and show them what we do in our conservation and restoration work, We work with archi tecture students and show them the development of architec- ture through the ages. Above all, we work with liberal arts students, who often have had no exposure to art before they came here and who enjoy our courses all the more because they are scholarly and not just ‘art appreciation.’ This is vanigue and this is what wus suuseun cat do and should do,1: Strategy and Effectiveness sj doubs that cis is really what we should be doing,” 1e chairman of the mathematics department. as far as I know, is part of the graduate fac ‘concentrate on training art historians in its ommented th The museum ily. It should PhD. program, 0 Baal wre tho the mosrom be considered an ea adete and epi to PRD. cation, con- Bae tis work, and stay ovt of all atempes be Fae thon campus and ouside oft The glory of Fame iris eh scholarly cxtalogs produced by our fac- Baur PhD, graduates who are ough afer by art a lis troughout the county. Tiss the muse a sgn ich can only be impaired by the atempss aaene whether wk stadens orth the public” Mite dean ul eying co pacity, “Bur think cis can i esl we know who the new director going be Bs coal rae thes goers wih im AY 'bep odie, Me. Dean” said one ofthe elder mn its scholarly work, and on its research. atesmen of the faculty. Larisa Harrison grimaced as she tossed her company’s Jatest quarterly eaenings onto the desk. When sales at Virginia-based Covington Corrugated Parts & Services urged past the §10 million mark some time back, Larisa was certain the company was well positioned for steady growth. Today Covington, which provides precision ma thine parts and service to the domestic corrugated box and paperboard industry, still enjoys a dominant market share, but sales and profits are showing cleat signs of stagnation. More than two decades ago, Larisa’s grandfather loaned heer the money to star the business and then handed over the bam on what had been the family’s Shenandoah Valley farm to serve as her first factory. He had been a progressive thinker ‘compar idea of woman running a machine parts plant, and he saw 00 reason why a smart, ambitious 27-year-old woman couldn't run anything she wanted to. His old-fashioned friends no lon fer scoffed when Larisa became one of the major employers in the local area, Today, Covington operates from a 50,000 eat 181 just few miles from that to many of his contemporaries who scoffed at the square-foot factory loc old family barn, The business allowed Larisa to realize what Inad once seemed an almost impossible goal: She was making 8 good living without having to leave her close-knit extended family and rural roots. She also felt a sense of satisfaction at ‘employing about 150 people, many of them neighbors. They ‘were among the most hard-working, loyal workers you'd find anywhere, However, many of her original employees were now nearing reticement, Replacing those skilled workers was toing ro be dificul, she realized [tun eapesience. The area's more likely t brightest and best young people were I discussed this question with an old friend and neighbor of mine in the country, the director of one of t igreat museums. He said to me: ‘You do not have a per- Sonality problem; you have a management problem. You have nor, as a university, taken responsibility for the mis sion, the direction, and the objectives of your museum. Un- til you do this, no director can succeed. And this is your nnot hope to get a good director decision. In fact, y ‘until you ean tell chat person wh. are, If your late director is to blame—I know him and I know that he is abrasive—it is for being willing to take on a job when you, the university, had not faced up to the ba- sic management decisions. There is no point talking about who should manage until tis clear what itis that has to managed and for what."” ‘At this point the dean realized the discussion unless he wanted the meeting to dege fate into a brawl, But he also realized that he had to iden: tify the issues and possible decisions before the next senate meeting a month later. your basic obj he had to adjourn 5 Covington Corrugated Parts & Services move away in search of employment than their parents had been. Those wlio remained behind just didn't seem vo have th work ethic Latisa had come to expect in her employees. Other problems were looming as well. Covington’s market share, once at a formidable 70 percent, was slip ping fast, brought about not only by the emergence of new direct competitors but also by changes in the industry. The box and paperboard industry had never ularly recession resistant, with demand fluctuating wich manu- ‘ating output. The rocky economy had hurt the whole industry, including Covington’s largest customers. Added to that, alternative shipping products, such as flexible plastic films and reusable plastic containers, were ing more prevalent. It remained to be seen how much a deat they'd make in the demand for boxes and paper- board. Even more worrying, consolidation in the industry had wiped out hundreds of the smaller U.S. plants th Covington once served, with many of the survivors either opening overseas facilities or entering into joint ventures abroad. The surviving manufacturers were investing i higher quality machines from Germany that broke di less frequently, thus requiring fewer of Covington’s parts. Covington was clearly ata crossroads, and its manag ers were arguing about which direction the company should take, If Covington wanted to grow, business as usual wasn’t going to work. But n6 one could seem to agree on the best ‘way 10 achieve growth. The marketing manager was push ing for moving into new products and services, perhaps teven serving other industries, while the director of financ lieved the plant needed to become more efficient, even Ia