Culture Chronicle

Sketching a Future for Brooklyn Museum
The New York Times - August 5, 2010
By Robin Pogrebin

Though it resides in a prime example of traditional museum architecture -- a Beaux-Arts building designed in 1893 by McKim, Mead & White -- there is little stale or stodgy about the Brooklyn Museum. For more than a century the museum has been one of the country's most important cultural institutions, and for more than a decade it has also courted controversy. And that is by design, part of a considered effort to address the challenges that it, along with many other museums, face: how to appeal to a new generation in a climate of persistent financial pressure and the ambition to grow, to do more, to expand its audience. By some measures it has succeeded. By others, including attendance goals articulated by the museum itself, it has not.

With a stagnant economy magnifying these challenges, The New York Times asked experts with various perspectives, including artists, business executives and museum directors, to take a look at a number of questions that now confront the Brooklyn Museum and others. Is attendance a good measure of museum success? How do institutions build financial support at a time when both donors and the government feel pinched? Should a museum do more to engage its local artists, who, in Brooklyn's case, are an especially vibrant group? And how should the unorthodox approach of the last decade be assessed?

In 1999 the museum created a maelstrom by exhibiting a painting that depicted the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung, prompting the mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to threaten to cut city financing. In 2002 it hosted an exhibition featuring props, models, costumes and characters from the "Star Wars" films that struck some reviewers as particularly lowbrow. And five years ago it added an unapologetically brash, modern glass entrance to the Old World exterior of its building. More recently it gave away its celebrated costume collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and did away with traditional curatorial departments -- like Egyptian art, African art and European painting -- in favor of "teams" for exhibitions and collections. It included a Louis Vuitton shop in its Takashi Murakami exhibition, including handbags and other items designed by that artist. And it agreed to devote an exhibition this month to the work of whichever unknown artist beats back the challengers on Bravo's reality show "Work of Art."

For many, the museum's often populist efforts have been just the kind of inventive risks necessary to stay accessible to the kind of visitors it has recently shown an ability to attract. The museum's audience, which numbered 340,000 people a year at last count, is now significantly younger and more diverse than it had been, with an average age of 35 and members of minority groups making up 40 percent of its visitors. Others grumble, though, that the institution's approach has undermined its stature, undersold its world-class collections and done little to increase attendance, which museum officials had once hoped would triple. Attendance, in fact, has been flat, even after the museum several years ago introduced First Saturdays -- free nights that include music, dancing, food, a cash bar, gallery talks and films -- which account for nearly a quarter of its visitors. For the full article, click here


Response From Arnold Lehman, the Director of the Brooklyn Museum

To the Editor:

Re "Sketching a Future for Brooklyn Museum" by Robin Pogrebin [published online Aug. 5]:

First, please let me thank you for choosing the Brooklyn Museum as the focal point to create a high-level dialogue about some of the challenges confronting cultural institutions in general, and art museums in particular, in the 21st century. Remembering that we are in the 21st century, with all the changes that have been brought about in the last decade, is a particularly important issue and commitment for the Brooklyn Museum.

The article performed an exceptional balancing act in eliciting a wide range of viewpoints -- from the very informed to a more macro view of the issues. I am grateful to all of those respondents who took the time to focus on many of these challenges as they relate to the Brooklyn Museum. Key among these responses -- based upon the questions asked by The Times -- was the role of attendance in judging success and the issue of the so-called populist approach that has been part of Brooklyn's long-standing strategic (before we knew what strategic was) commitment to its community. The Museum's current program is based upon both a very long and prominent history at the Museum of populist programming to engage every wave of immigration to Brooklyn from the beginning of the 20th century to the present -- a truly amazing century-long commitment to new and underserved audiences -- and the continuation of the highest standards for the exhibition of our extraordinary collection covering 5,000 years of art history -- one of the greatest in the nation. As a major example of our commitment to our rich collection and to the role of today's museum, our recent collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum in placing our collection of 25,000 costumes at the Met was completed after more than four years of intensive study supported by the Mellon Foundation and was the largest instance of collection sharing in American museum history. Brooklyn benefits, the Met benefits, and most importantly, the public benefits.

The commitment to best engage our Brooklyn community -- 2.7 million strong -- and the commitment to using our collection have worked together to create the most diverse and youngest audience of any general fine arts museum in the country. Our interest is in who is coming to the Brooklyn Museum -- and embracing them -- not in their numbers. We are looking ahead in this century, not backward to the early 20th.

Brooklyn, like other museums throughout the country -- especially urban museums -- is challenged by serious funding issues. However, where other museums might also be challenged by location, the Brooklyn Museum seizes upon our location as a great asset in ensuring that we remain relevant in the 21st century, which is perhaps the greatest challenge to almost every cultural institution anywhere. Being relevant involves risk-taking. As with all risks, some prove successful, others not. Looking at the overall record of our risk-taking, we believe that the successes far outnumber the failures. Whatever the scorecard, the Brooklyn Museum has never believed in playing it safe.

Indeed, Brooklyn is home to the greatest and most vibrant concentration of artists in the world, and we are profoundly aware of the Museum's position and commitment to this community. I believe that our record of exhibitions, acquisitions, and new installations of contemporary art speak to this commitment. For this year and next, we are already planning exhibitions and projects that continue this commitment to Brooklyn artists -- and to the larger Brooklyn community as well.For the full letter to the editor, click here