[SOLVED] Locals referred to it—affectionately or

Locals referred to it—affectionately or sarcastically—as the “Adding Museum.” Housed in the massive Romanesque-style former mansion of Horace and Margaret Addlington, the 100-year-old Addlington Gallery of Art had, by 2016, reached a tipping point of institutional and financial distress. Considered a point of civic and cultural pride, the home and its extensive collection of art had been the generous gift to the city’s residents under terms of the legal wills of the childless industrial tycoon and his wife following their deaths in a 1910 motor-car accident.
The museum was established and controlled, as dictated in the will, by a Board of Directors comprised of old-moneyed families, friends of the Addlingtons, whose seats on the board historically passed from one generation to the next. In accordance with Horace and Margaret’s desires to make their collections “accessible to all,” the museum was, for several decades, free to the public. In its opening days and weeks, the rarefied opportunity for locals to “see inside the mansion,” as much as to see the art, lured scores of visitors who endured long lines to enter the city’s most palatial residence. Once the newness had worn off, however, the museum settled into a reputation as the cultural domain of the “la-de-dah art elite.”
Over the decades, the cost of conserving the collection, and the mounting expenses of upkeep for the mansion and the gardens and grounds, spurred the Board to create an annual fund-raising gala that allowed society to admire the art and each other. Later, the necessity of admission fees to the museum added modestly to the overall financial situation, but visitor numbers remained stagnant and the majority of locals never ventured inside. I always felt like, if I didn’t drive up in a Mercedes, the staff didn’t care whether or not I came. They were cold to the point of rudeness, explained one long-time city resident.
Problems at the museum became public knowledge. Hirings and firings occurred at the whim of the Board, and on one occasion, the entire staff was fired without warn- ing. The approaching 2010 centennial was marred by controversy and lawsuits over whether to sell a large portion of the collection in order to keep the museum afloat.
The media and legal commotion over losing a collection that a majority of the city’s residents had never seen sparked a generous outpouring of private financial support. During the campaign to Save the Admirable Addlington, the Board, in an effort to impress potential donors, actively sought, and received, the support of an adjacent private university with promises to build a collaborative partnership.
By 2013, with improved financial means to move the museum into a second century, the venerable Board, com- posed of member names stretching five generations, faced an organizational culture shock and a new and emboldened set of stakeholders. Under pressure to define the future direction of the museum and in preparation for selecting a new director, the Board hired two business students to conduct person-to-person interviews of stakeholders about the future vision and goals for the museum and the relationship of the university to the museum.
Excerpts from some of the more powerful comments by interviewees are listed below:
A major new private donor: The museum has a reputation as an elitist, unfriendly institution, contrary to the intent of Horace and Margaret Addlington. My wife and I gave money with the expectation that the museum would, at last, embrace the vision of its benefactors of bringing the art to everyone. In order to accomplish this, the museum must have an educational component and promote vis- its from public schools in the area, and particularly serve the inner-city children who don’t have access to art and who live within a mile of the museum. The snobbish, elitist atmosphere that extends from the Board through the ranks of the museum staff must be changed.
A board member: I’ve heard rumors that some people want to open this museum to scores of public school tours and after-school programs. I realize that school children need access to art and I sympathize with that need. But this is not a typical museum structure, it’s a house that was constructed almost 120 years ago and has a variety of delicate surfaces and structural refinements that must be preserved and treasured for future generations. The upkeep of this building is tremendous with our current level of visitation. When you add several thousand school kids each year, the traffic through the building, the noise level within the building, compromises the structure and takes away from the experience of viewing great art. I can see creating educational programs that go out to the schools, but not bringing huge school groups here; and certainly not serving as some sort of after-school day care. No. I cannot see that.
A university administrator: The important thing is to add lively contemporary exhibits that will attract both university students and community adults and provide new insight and dialogue about current events. We can bring attention to the museum and spur dialogue by having an occasional controversial exhibit, such as Islamic art, and exhibits that appeal to Hispanics and African Americans. This approach would entail bringing in traveling exhibitions from major museums and loaning out portions of the Addlington collection in exchange.
Head of the art history department: The key thing is that the museum will not have the artistic resources or the financial resources to serve the community at large. We have a wonderful opportunity to integrate the museum with the academic faculty and make it a teaching institution. It can be a major resource for both undergraduate and graduate students in art education and in art history. Using the collections inside and the structure itself as a classroom, we can also work with engineering students, architecture students, and students in the liberal arts. This is a unique opportunity that will distinguish our art history department’s mission from others in the country.
A faculty member of the art history department: The best use of the museum’s relationship with the university is to concentrate on training PhD level students in art history and to support scholarly research. I strongly urge the museum to focus on graduate education, which would increase the stature of the university nationally. Graduate students would be involved in the design of exhibits that would fit their research. Trying to make the museum pop- ular on campus or in the community will waste our limited resources. Our PhD students will be sought after by art history departments throughout the country, adding also to the prestige of the Addlington Gallery of Art.
Head of the university’s new department of public history: It is imperative, upon selection of the new museum director, that the Board relinquish some of its power in the rethinking of the current collection and the selection and design of future exhibits to trained museum professionals—not art history experts. The professional expertise of the director and the staff; their knowledge of best practices in the field; their cognizance of trends and innovations in the museum field, will ultimately determine the success or failure of this museum.
You have been invited to interview for the position of museum director and must now consider how you would answer questions that might arise during the interview process and how you would move the museum forward if you took the job.
Questions
1. What are the possible purposes of the Addlington Gallery of Art? Which purpose would you choose for the museum?
2. Who are or should be the museum’s customers?
3. What are the implications of the selected purpose and customers for the museum’s structural design, the qualifications of its director, and its relationship to the university?

Question: Locals referred to it—affectionately or