April 10, 2018 Naturalization Ceremony at the New-York Historical Society. Photograph by Howard Heyman. Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society.

Dear Members, Friends, and Supporters,

As summer comes to a close and we begin to gear up for a busy fall, I am excited to report on “Museums Support Democracy,” our webinar series produced in partnership with Museum Hue and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Humanities New York. The seven programs featured fifteen museum professionals from around the nation discussing Citizenship, Environmental Justice, Ethical Collecting and Deaccessioning, Expanding Interpretive Lenses, Healing Historical Legacies, Museums and Civil Rights, and Protest Through Visual and Performance Art. 869 people from 48 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, the US Virgin Islands, as well as Barbados, Canada, China, Hungary, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom participated in the webinars. 

I encourage everyone to take an hour if you can and listen to one of these conversations. MANY members can access the recordings from the member resource page on our website. The speaker's comments and questions asked by attendees point to ways that museums can sustain and strengthen democracy in their communities. Thoughts and experiences generously shared during these inspiring discussions have been fueling my hope for the role of museums in our nation’s future. I also want to take this space to express my gratitude to Megan Eves, MANY’s Assistant Director for Programs and Communications for her exceptional work organizing and producing this important series. 

Fifty-seven years ago this month, President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In his timely, open letter to New York’s Museums, Danny O’Donnell, New York Assembly Member and Chair, Committee on Tourism, Parks, Arts, and Sports Development invites museums to support democracy by partnering with their local election boards to become polling sites. The central location of many museums and their open public spaces can make them ideal polling site locations. Serving as a polling place can also be a wonderful way for museums to welcome people who might not have otherwise visited their spaces. 

MANY will continue to support and amplify the work of museums who incorporate the plurality and multivocality of our nation’s history, art, and culture in their core programs. Earlier this month, we submitted an application for funding to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a project we are calling “A New Agora for New York: Museums as Spaces for Democracy.” In Ancient Greek cities an Agora was both an assembly of people and the physical setting in which they gathered. It was an open space in which intellectual and thought-provoking discussions formed the foundation of a civil society. If funded, this humanities discussion series will use the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street Exhibition Voices and Votes: Democracy in America as a launching point for twelve museums and their communities to explore, reflect on, and tell the story of their role in the evolution of American Democracy. We won't receive notification of the NEH’s funding decision until April of 2023, but I extend our thanks to project partners, Humanities New York, the New York State Museum, and OurStoryBridge. We are also grateful to NY Senator Gillibrand, Rep. Tonko (NY-20) and the 100 museums who signed on to a support letter for the project.

Advocacy is a key part of the democratic process and has been part of MANY’s mission since the organization’s founding 60 years ago. As we await the advance of the Museum Study Bill, and plan our 2022-23 legislative agenda, we welcome your input to help guide us. Click here to let us know your interests for our advocacy efforts. 

I wish you the best as the pages of the calendar turn toward to the end of this year, 

Erika Sanger

Executive Director 

Founded in 2014, Museums for All is a nationwide, cooperative initiative between the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) aimed to remove financial barriers for museum visitors, encourage families of all backgrounds to visit museums regularly, and build lifelong museum habits. Museums for All encourages community partnerships, peer to peer learning, and serves as an entry point for museums to address equitability. Today there are over 960 participating museums across the country, and the US Virgin Islands with a total of 4.5 million people visiting museums through this program since it began.

Ithaca’s Sciencenter was one of the first to join Museums for All in 2014

“Back in 2013, the ACM board at our annual conference adopted the mission statement that all children deserve access to high-quality museum experiences,” said Brendan Cartwright, Museums for All Program Manager. “At the same time, IMLS was looking to put a program together that would increase access to museums by removing financial barriers.” In fact, ACM had many of its members already offering free or reduced museum admission through SNAP or EBT cards. “ACM and IMLS entered into a cooperative agreement where we would take the approach that was already happening at individual museums and codify it by building a framework and making it available on a national scale.” The program was piloted in children’s museums and later expanded to include museums of all disciplines.

“It launched with the goal to make museums as accessible as possible and remove any financial barriers. This initiative particularly looks  at financial barriers for people, but fit in well with organizations as they look to self-assess how they can make their museums as accessible as possible.”

Participation and Eligibility

Museums join Museums for All once and can exit the program at any time. The registration process is open to all museums, including for-profit museums. Museums for All uses a categorical list of museums generated by IMLS. “If your museum fits within one of these categories, then you’re eligible to participate,” said Cartwright.

To participate, museums offer reduced or free admission to individuals and families that present a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card, and a valid form of photo identification. Reduced admission must be $3 or less for up to four people per EBT card. Visitors do not have to register for this program in order to participate.

“One of the things that set this program apart from other similar access programs like Philadelphia’s Art-Reach and Mass Cultural Council’s Card to Culture is that you can show an EBT card from any state to any participating museum,” said Cartwright. SNAP is administered on a state-by-state basis resulting in different-looking cards. “So if someone from New Jersey wants to visit a participating museum in New York, they would be able to.” Included in the Museums for All toolkit is a PDF with a sample of all the cards from different states. “We figured it was the least intrusive way to establish a financial need. Some museums ask to see the physical card to apply the discount but others won’t ask to see it.” 

Museums that don’t normally charge admission can also participate in Museums for All. “Primarily, it’s about making that active invitation to the community,” said Cartwright. “It can also serve as an opportunity to look for other areas in their operations that they might reduce some barriers like with membership or in the gift shop.”

Program guidelines also include clearly publicizing Museums for All by posting information about access on museum websites and other collateral materials, use of the approved Museums for All PR toolkit resources for branding guidelines in all communications, training for sales and front-line staff, and regularly reporting visitor numbers. 

Participation is intentionally designed to be flexible. “We’ve set a baseline, but we encourage museums to feel free to build on it with whatever makes sense for their communities. Some museums will accept WIC [Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children] in addition to SNAP/EBT. Other museums go even further by offering discounted memberships,” said Cartwright. “It’s part of the flexibility of the program…it’s ready to go where someone can just show their EBT card and gain access to the museum or museums can really emphasize it where they go out into the community, talk with their SNAP office, and let people know to come to their museum. You can participate as little or as much as you want. We want museums to be responsive to their communities.” Many Museums for All participants use the program to broaden their visitor base and reach out to underserved communities. “Whatever works best for your museum and your community works for us and we will try to support however we can.”

Resources and Support

In the Museums for All Toolkit (available in English and Spanish) prospective participants can listen to or read the transcript of a webinar that introduces the program with speakers from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Boston Children’s Museum, and Zimmer Children’s Museum explaining why they chose to participate and how Museums for All works in their institution. The toolkit includes branding, editable bookmarks, postcards, sample press releases, social media images, and training recommendation guidelines. Training recommendations include the importance of understanding SNAP/EBT, sensitivity training, and how to respond to visitors that don’t qualify for Museums for All by offering other ways the museum supports access and inclusion like other free or reduced admission hours. 

“We also try to bring together museums as much as possible through virtual hangouts, sending newsletters that share experiences and stories and what makes things work or get input on areas where something isn’t as successful,” said Cartwright. “These peer-to-peer learning opportunities have been pretty successful with a dedicated core of museums.” 

Museums for All encourages partnerships between community groups, schools, and other museums by sharing materials and sharing social media content and email lists or by providing brochures to waiting rooms and to the local SNAP office. 

Hub Cities

“As the program’s gotten bigger with more museums joining, we’ve begun to identify cities that have three or more participating museums and we call these cities ‘Hub Cities,’” said Cartwright. “We try to give them a little more resources and try to get them to work together. ‘Hub Cities’ have more opportunities to do more cross-marketing and outreach like perhaps a family starts at the children’s museum and then as the children get older they get more interested in the science or art museum but then the whole family wants to go to the zoo, etc. It’s a way to expand on the cultural offerings when more museums participate in one city.”

There are about 70 Hub Cities with three in New York State; NYC, Rochester, and Ithaca with the Sciencenter being one of the very first museums to join.

"The Sciencenter adopted the Museums For All initiative early on because we strongly believe in providing all members of our community with access to hands-on science experiences,” said Kelly Barclay, Public and Media Relations Manager at the Sciencenter. “In 2022 alone we've had over 1,500 people visit the museum using MfA entry. This program allows families who cannot afford the price of admission a chance to explore, connect, and create with science at our museum. We've received great feedback from our community regarding this program and we will continue to prioritize it at the Sciencenter."

Since joining in 2014, the Sciencenter has seen almost a total of 18,000 visitors using the Museums for All program or representing 3% of total visitors. Most of those visitors turned out to be graduate students. “I think that they were expecting one type of visitor would be taking advantage of this program and then were surprised about who was actually coming throught the door. We give training and we really try to emphasize that you cannot make assumptions about why someone might be eligible but you’re there to share the museum with them.”

Reporting

Cartwright conducts and shares quarterly attendance reports through a reporting page on the Museums for All website. “It varies a little bit but overall about 3% of total museum visitors are using the Museums for All program. That percentage is a bit higher in children’s museums averaging closer to 6% and history and art museums are a bit lower averaging closer to 1%. But regardless of size or geographic location, that 3% is pretty solid across the board. 

In New York State, there are now 62 participating museums, which combined have served 53,435 people through the program. Museums in New York State average Museums for All attendance is at 1.5% with the highest percentage of total visitors at the Utica Children’s Museum with 6%. New York State is third overall with the most participating museums. 

Additional benefits 

According to a 2018 report, 45% of museums join Museums for All as a way to help them provide better access to community members and 27% join because the initiative fits the museum’s mission, vision, or larger diversity, equity, access, and inclusion plans.

“I joined ACM in November 2021 and one of the reasons that I was very interested in this role and what they were doing was because of Museums for All,” said Keni Sturgeon, Director of Strategic Initiatives for ACM. “What’s been interesting to me is those who’ve been members that offered low-cost admission are now exploring reduced membership options. Museums are using Museums for All as a conversation starter about what it really means to be an equitable museum around the financial side. To me, it’s been really interesting to see those conversations emerge and people reaching out to Brendan or sharing with others in the virtual hangouts about the work they’re doing in that area and it’s really wonderful to see.”

In the 2018 report, more than 25% of museums saw an increase in attendance, development revenue, and program and membership subscription. 20% reported significant shifts in visitor demographics. 

While IMLS and ACM don’t distribute any funding to museums through this program, participating museums are allowed to fundraise or seek sponsors on behalf of Museums for All at their institution and 30% of museums stated that it was actually a revenue driver to join the program. “Because Museums for All is about removing a financial barrier, you’re not necessarily giving up a full-price admission by offering it for $3 or less because your museum is reaching people that weren’t coming before. There’s usually no loss of revenue and some build development opportunities around the program.” 

Where to learn more

Museums interested in Museums for All can visit museums4all.org or email questions to Brendan Cartwright at brendan.cartwright@childrensmuseums.org. He also recommends taking a look at the current list of participating museums. “If a museum is curious about the program, they can visit our website to see if any of their neighbor museums are participating. I would encourage them to reach out to learn more about their experience.”

Visit https://museums4all.org/ to learn more. 

Joshua Ruff is the Deputy Director and Director of Collections & Interpretation at the Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages, in Stony Brook. He is a graduate of Syracuse University with a dual major in Broadcast Journalism and in History, and Stony Brook University with a MA in History. Ruff has worked at the Long Island Museum for 25 years including as Curator of its History and Carriage Collections and has curated more than 60 exhibitions. 

Recently named the next co-Executive Director of the Long Island Museum and elected to the MANY board this past April, we spoke with Ruff to learn more about this museum experience and what his new position will look like. 

MANY: How did you get into the museum field? What was your career path like?

Joshua Ruff: Maybe by accident. It wasn’t the life that I had planned for myself when I was thinking about a career but now I’ve been predominantly at one institution for 25 years; working with the museum’s collection, exhibitions, and all of the special projects. I've been very fortunate to have had worked with incredible mentors including the chief curator at the museum, William Ayers. I worked with him for 16 years before he retired and then I was promoted to his position  Our outgoing Executive Director Neil Watson was also a mentor. Those are just two incredible people who have left a great mark on me that I've been lucky to have known and worked with. 

Working in museums was nothing that I imagined or anticipated but it’s been a progressively deeper experience. I've worked in curatorial positions throughout my career but with more administrative responsibilities as time has gone on. 

What other experiences outside your museum career have you found most helpful in your role now? 

While attending Syracuse University as an undergrad majoring in Broadcast Journalism, public speaking,  working with the press and media, and video production. The Long Island Museum produces videos for exhibitions and our YouTube Channel. So I have a big role in video productions using those skills.  

The ability to ask questions about what is interesting and to communicate with a broad audience is an important skill that I learned early on, even if I didn’t know what I thought I would do with that skill, but now it’s incredibly useful in my museum career. It’s important to connect beyond a specialized audience, especially in museums. We need to be able to talk to a variety of people and the only way you get better at it is to do it as often as you can. 

What are some of your biggest motivations to do what you do? What do you get excited about in your role as both Deputy Director and Director of Collections & Interpretation?

The ability to work with and preserve our collections but also develop a long-term goal and vision about how we do that. But also it’s really the folks that I work with.

I have twenty-seven colleagues at the museum. The curatorial department is small, but we have a great work culture where there is a lot of interconnection, sharing, and creativity. We’ve got each other's backs and that motivates me more than anything. I want to do my best to help my colleagues. I think museums do great things, especially when they have people working together, creating in harmony, and putting in an effort which is not a small thing to be able to achieve. 

How do you create that environment?

You have to set the tone every day in meetings and the work that you do. For me, I’m in the thick of things and I've worked for people who didn’t sit in a chair and tell people what to do. That's not my style nor is it the style of the people that I've worked for. I think you have to trust and respect what people are good at, learn what they’re good at, come together, and have trust in the process. I’m the first one to admit that I will never know everything, but I trust the people that I work with that are more specialized to do the job, but I will be involved in the discussion about where we need to go. 

You were recently promoted to the position of Executive Director sharing the duties with Sarah Abruzzi set to start this fall. Can you tell me more about how those duties will be split? How will the decision to have co-Executive Directors impact the museum? Is this a long-term plan for the museum?

It’s definitely a long-term approach. Sarah and I were interviewed together by the board of trustees and it was very much “this is our path moving forward” conversation. Sarah’s responsibilities will be advancement and operations and mine will be collections, programming, and visitor services. We will work together on all of this too. I think the reason it will work for us is we have great mutual respect and work well together. This is years in the making. We’ve been Deputy Directors together for four years and in that role, we worked closely with our executive director Neil Watson. So when people ask “how will this work?”, well it has been working. It’s something that has been successful over these last few years, especially the last couple of years as museums reimagine their futures.

In the complicated world of running museums, an approach where you have shared responsibility in leadership can be a great model for an institution. 

We feel really confident that it will work at the Long Island Museum and that this structure will  expand our footprint and allow us to build community partnerships and meet our constituents. We’re also going to be learning and know that learning will be a part of the process. 

Would your 18-year-old self imagine that you would be where you are today? 

I thought I was going to be a sports broadcaster. Growing up, I was consumed by sports and I thought that’s what I was going to do. I went to Syracuse University for Broadcast journalism and it was only while there as a student that I started taking history classes and adding a history major. For me going into museum work was nonlinear. I had formative experiences growing up and those experiences brought me to museums. Then once I was almost done with graduate school at Stony Brook, I started working with the Long Island Museum as a curatorial assistant. I remember thinking that it was only going to be a couple of years and then I was going to go back into grad school and be a professor of history, but they got their hooks in me, I decided to stay with it, and it became my career. 

Can you tell us about where you grew up?

I grew up in Upstate New York. Both of my parents went to Cornell University so I grew up in Ithaca and then after they split up, I went to live with my mom in Johnson City. We definitely visited a lot of museums when I was a kid growing up. I remember many trips to the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell and just being in awe of their African Art Collection and some of their Hudson River School paintings where you could kind of see yourself in this vast wilderness. My parents had a 10-acre farm and we were outside constantly.

After I graduated from college, I volunteered at the Roberson Museum in Binghamton, and it was the first time I ever worked in a museum. I helped catalog their glass plate photograph collection. The privilege of being able to handle that collection that you normally would just see on display, I’m still addicted to that kind of stuff, all these years later. You get to know these things as intimately as you would people and that’s a real privilege. 

What are some of your favorite moments while on the job? Is there an achievement that you are most proud of?

I would have to say the fact that over the course of COVID our staff all stayed with us. We had one educator leave for a new job and other than that, we entirely stayed together. I don’t say that’s my achievement but something that we all achieved together. 

Favorite moments include when an exhibition goes up or when the last label is written.I love it because of the long process to get to those moments. I’ve done a lot of exhibitions throughout my career and it’s always been exciting.

I would say the last thing I’m proud of is that we recently completed our Land Acknowledgment with the Setalcott Nation. It was a very eye-opening process and I’m proud that it’s a start of a long-term relationship that is going to help the community and give them an understanding of our heritage and history of this land. 

Blue sky question, what would you want to do at the museum, no limits? What’s a project you would love to do? 

I keep thinking that there are a lot of museums partnering with contemporary artists who are using a museum’s collection as inspiration to create a new perspective. I would love to hire a contemporary artist or artists to use our William Sidney Mount painting collection that has some heavy things to say about race and class in America’s 19th century and here we are in the 21st century looking at many of the same issues but through a different lens and with a different understanding of it. 

We also have a carriage collection at the museum and with our current conversation about the future of electric transportation, i think that maybe having a contemporary artist do a take on the horseless electric carriage of the future might be a fun interesting throughline connection that goes back to the beginning of it, a connection from past to present.  

Zulmilena Then, Preservation Manager, Weeksville Heritage Center at the 2022 annual conference in Corning, NY –MANY’s inaugural recipient of the Scholarship for BIPOC Museum Administrators

As a native Brooklynite, grassroots organizer and activist, Zulmilena Then works in various capacities to preserve her home community. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Pratt Institute and currently serves as the Preservation Manager for the Weeksville Heritage Center (WHC). In this capacity, she ensures the integrity and long-term preservation of the Historic Hunterfly Road Houses, the only remaining domestic structures of 19th-century Weeksville. Before WHC, while working with the Black-owned architectural firm Michael Ivanhoe McCaw Architect, P.C, renovating historic buildings throughout Brooklyn, mainly in Bed-Stuy, she realized the power historic buildings have in anchoring our communities. In 2015, this inspired her to form, Preserving East New York (PENY), an organization focused on celebrating and elevating the voices of the predominantly Black and Brown East New York community to make a real social and political change to protect the neighborhood through historic preservation.

Zulmilena Then is the inaugural recipient of the Scholarship for BIPOC Museum Administrators. As part of her conference scholarship, we asked her to share more about her role at Weeksville and her reflection on the conference.

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Stepping into the museum field at the start of 2020 at Weeksville Heritage Center (WHC) in Brooklyn, NY, was not what I expected as the Preservation Manager. I came into the institution to care for the historic Hunterfly Road Houses, the last residential remnants of the historic Weeksville neighborhood, one of the largest 19th-century free African American communities in the United States. But two months after starting my role, COVID-19 shut down our worlds and forced us to stay at home. Suddenly separated physically from the structures the institution hired me to care for was perplexing; how do I do my job from home? The pandemic changed how I engaged with the site, the historic houses and my work and opened the doors to incite thinking beyond the traditional ways we previously had conformed to fulfill our roles at work and in life.

While the world swiftly learned to adapt to different ways of living and working, the events unfolding shortly after the shutdown sparked a fire for the Black Lives Matter movement to rise again, unequivocally triggering the racist roots and oppressive systems we have inherited since birth. The pandemic has been a shifting moment for people, organizations, and governments to re-evaluate themselves and their roles in enforcing systems that have not been equal and just. With Envisioning Our Museums For the Seventh Generation, the Museum Association of New York's Annual Conference opened up a space to reflect on what that would mean for each of us within the museum field, what role we play, and how our actions will take shape for the seventh generation. The Seventh Generation Principle is an Indigenous philosophy about being mindful of our present-day actions and decisions and the impact they will have on the seventh generation.

During the conference opening, Jamie Jacobs of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, Turtle Clan, curator at the Rochester Museum and Science Center for the Rock Foundation, welcomed us and delivered his message in the Indigenous Seneca language, followed by English translations. I marveled at the poetics of his tongue and rich expressions. With a room filled with English speakers, I thought it was a beautiful and powerful move—a reminder of where we stand, the sacred land of the Indigenous. It was also a reminder to come up, show up as you are, and take up space. As a person of color, a daughter of immigrants where English was my second language growing up, and as a preservationist and professional just starting in the white-dominated museum field, it was a moment of empowerment. While listening to them, I reflected on information access in museums. How are museums working to be more inclusive? Are digital, audio and printed materials available in languages other than English? Are we gatekeeping information by not doing so? Why are we not reaching beyond the English language? Or are we using language to separate ourselves and exclude others? 

After Jamie Jacobs followed the Opening Keynote by Chloe Hayward, Associate Director of Education at the Studio Museum in Harlem, who delivered a phenomenal introspective speech. One question she asked that stuck with me was, "How are we as museums co-creating with communities we are with and a part of? How are we making space?". This question made me reflect on who has access to information, how information is shared, and who the targeted audience is for museums. When in early 2020, the world closed its doors for in-person connections, the internet opened its doors and provided broader opportunities we hadn't explored before. While the internet provided closeness in the digital world, it also excluded those without access to the technology. While the internet can facilitate instant and wider outreach, how are organizations and institutions connecting to the surrounding community beyond the museum's building and digital walls? Is there community outreach in person? Is the targeted audience representative of the surrounding neighborhoods, and are we creating opportunities to give underrepresented communities access? Are those communities sitting at the table to influence our programming and engagement? Are we asking what their needs are, and are we supporting them? Are we invited to sit at their table? If not, how do we build community trust? 

While hope for a better place exists, change can only start from within. Are we doing the work within ourselves to bring about the change we want and need in the world? Only then can we dismantle the racist, oppressive, inequitable and unjust systems we've inherited. Only then can the world and its institutions start being shaped by how the nation should move forward into a just and inclusive environment. A better world we can begin to birth for the Seventh Generation.

–Zulmilena Then, Preservation Manager, Weeksville Heritage Center, July 2022

Dr. Callie Johnson is the Director of Communications & Community Engagement at Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. She is an award-winning marketing, communications, and nonprofit leadership executive. Dr. Johnson serves in an executive role stewarding the rebranding of America’s sixth oldest art museum, which is in the process of becoming the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. She is the former Executive Vice President of Marketing for Girl Scouts of Western New York and a current member of the Forbes Communications Council, an invitation-only community for executives in communications, marketing, and public relations. She is the winner of two Buffalo Business First awards—40 Under 40 and 30 Under 30 —for making a difference both on the job and in the community. She is a Buffalo-Niagara 360 Spotlight Professional for her career success and her commitment to strengthening the Buffalo Niagara region. She was awarded three Girl Scouts of Western New York Finance Certificates of Accomplishment and a Commitment to Excellence Award. We spoke with Dr. Johnson about her career journey, lessons learned from her previous jobs, and what makes her excited about her role at the AKG Art Museum.

Dr. Callie Johnson volunteering at Buffalo Promise Neighborhood reading to students

Can you tell us more about your career path? What was your journey to your current position at the Albright-Knox?

My journey to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, was a welcome surprise given that I had been in my former marketing executive role for several years. I began my career in product and advertising sales and shifted to the nonprofit sector. I have spentmore than 15-years as a marketing communications servant leader in multiple areas, including human services, education, the arts, and practically everything in between. I always want the work that I’m a part of to serve as a catalyst for greater positive changes in the lives of people, society, and the world. 

What other experiences in your career have you found most helpful in your role now? 

Being a mentor and a mentee throughout my career have been excellent ways to both gain valuable lessons from peers or other more seasoned professionals and to pay it forward. I always like to keep building my skill toolkit along the way with the important lessons that I learn from either a process or an interaction. It’s the collection of these lessons and skills that helps to make me a stronger and more effective professional. 

What are some of your biggest motivations to do what you do? What do you get excited about in your role as the Director of Communications & Community Engagement?

My biggest motivation and excitement are around knowing that I’ve joined the Buffalo AKG at a historic time, during the rebranding and expansion of the campus. I’m extremely excited about having the Communications and Community Engagement areas under one umbrella to work in tandem and help broaden our visitation, membership, and inclusivity as an institution. We are engaged in extensive groundwork by being out in the community, building new relationships, and strengthening existing relationships that we have treasured for years. We are also using marketing communications mediums as tools to communicate the evolution of the museum and its many offerings. 

Albright-Knox is undergoing a massive transformation. From your expertise in community engagement, public relations, and communications, what are some of your goals/strategies for keeping the community informed of this process and how will these goals change when the museum opens?

In order to ensure everyone in our community is aware of the construction and opening of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, we have embarked upon a strategic communications and marketing campaign that represents the most substantial public outreach in the museum’s history. Through owned, earned, and paid media, we are working hard to speak directly to everyone in our community and around the world. At the same time, we are also pursuing extensive community engagement in a way that dovetails with our communications efforts. It is essential that we communicate clearly and consistently both with the thousands of individuals and families who already know and love the museum and with countless others to whom we are introducing ourselves for the first time. 

Would your 18-year-old self imagine that you would be where you are today? 

My 18-year-old self had a fierce determination to be successful. I know at that age, I never would’ve imagined that I would earn a PhD, so that would be a huge shocker moment for 18-year-old Callie.  

Can you tell us about where you grew up? (school, family, hometown, etc.) What was it like growing up there?

I grew up on the east side of the great city of Buffalo, NY. The area on the east side where I grew up was challenging, but there was always a steady supply of faith, love, and laughs. I am one of five children and very proud to be a first-generation college graduate. 

Since you started last July, are there any particular memories that stand out to you? Any favorite moments while on the job? Is there an achievement that you are most proud of?

I would say that a favorite moment is completing my first year on the job at the Buffalo AKG and successfully transitioning our Publications and Digital Experience Department such that it is now under the umbrella of Communications and Community Engagement. Starting a new role is seldom easy—in fact it can be very scary—and I am proud that I continue to challenge myself in this new space and work through the growing pains to lead my team, be a good colleague, and help us reach our institutional goals. Even though there is a lot more work to be done, I’m proud that we are being more intentional and moving in the right direction to start reaching the communities who have not traditionally visited the museum in the past. 

For fun, you have an entire museum to yourself. What do you do?

True to my job, I would have a big community day and activate the whole campus indoors and outdoors with fun activities for 24 hours. I would have six, four-hour blocks of time filled with different amazing and awe-inspiring experiences for people of all ages and abilities. 

Beatrix Farrand Garden, Bellefield, Hyde Park

Dear Members, Friends, and Supporters,

For the past couple of years my summer calendar has been decorated with patterns of red circles. The red circles represent the dates that applications for funding are due to private foundations as well as federal and state agencies. They also represent hours of writing, conversations, calculations, and a lot of hope.

For me, it is hope that MANY will be able to keep our museum community connected with a sense of belonging and offer programs where peer-to-peer learning can support shared purpose. These hopes are embedded in our 2022-2026 Strategic Plan approved by MANY’s board of directors at our June 22 meeting. I am pleased to share this important document and welcome your ideas to help us achieve our goals. 

We also have hope for the future of New York’s museums as our society grapples with tremendous change. Museums can use their resources to support and empower communities to face ideas, issues, and challenges. Grants that help museums emerge from the pandemic stronger than they were before 2020 and build their capacity for the future are available from an amazing array of sources. 

We are pleased to announce a fifth round of funds available through application to the Pomeroy Fund for NYS History. This round of funding will distribute $100,000 in amounts up to and including $5,000 for salary support/hourly wages to bring back or hire museum educators who will plan and deliver interpretative educational programs. You can learn more about eligibility and the application process here. We will open the application portal on July 18. 

The deadline for the New York State Council on the Arts’ 2023 funding opportunities is July 12.  

Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York is accepting applications for Planning and Assessment Grants through July 15. 

The National Endowment for the Arts’ Our Town creative placemaking grant deadline is August 4. 

The National Endowment for the Humanities is accepting applications for Public Humanities Projects through August 10.  

And if you thought you have missed it, you didn’t! September 1 is the new deadline for the Greater Hudson Heritage/NYSCA Conservation Treatment Grant Program. 

Humanities New York accepts applications on a rolling basis for their Quick Grants and Vision Grants and will soon announce a fall 2022 deadline for their next round of Action Grants. 

The Preservation League of New York State will also soon announce a fall deadline for their Technical Assistance grants. 

Whether it is assistance to secure buildings and collections or deliver programs and services for communities, these opportunities represent so much hope for our museums.  

Some museum professionals struggle with writing narratives for grant applications or formulating budgets that express organizational priorities in financial terms. With so many deadlines on the horizon, I am pleased to share that we have figured out a way to offer our grant writing workshop virtually. The four-hour participatory workshop will take place over two mornings, from 10 AM – Noon on August 30 and 31. Space is limited; the registration fee covers the cost of mailing the grant workshop materials to you. You can learn more and register here.

With hope that you find time in the next month to take a break from your grant writing and celebrate summer, 

Erika Sanger

Executive Director

In 2024, the Olana State Historic Site will open the Frederic Church Center, a 4,500-square-foot orientation center with ticketing, restrooms, a café, and exhibition space. It will be the first new building at Olana since American painter Frederic Church’s death in 1900. It will also be the first publicly accessible carbon-neutral building in New York State. The $11 million project was generated from a 2015 strategic landscape design that encompasses the land and buildings that could be recovered, restored, rehabilitated, and brought into the full public experience. 

Expanding and Improving the Visitor Experience

“In 2021, Olana had over 200,000 visitors, but only 16% took a public tour,” said Sean Sawyer, the Washburn & Susan Oberwager President at The Olana Partnership. To help accommodate the current visitorship, the FCC will include 45 parking spaces, an entry lobby for ticketing and orientation, restrooms that will be accessible after ticketing hours, a café (the first time that Olana will offer food and beverages on site), and a multipurpose room. 

“In the busiest times there are a limited number of tickets so there are a lot of sold-out tours, or visitors have to wait for the next tour and 90% of the total visitors only experience 1% of the landscape.” Olana already offers a number of public programs focused on connecting visitors to the landscape including the program series, Environmentalists on Olana consisting of walks led by regional environmentalists, agriculturalists, activists, and ecological stewards. The series is designed to give visitors an opportunity to explore Olana’s history and current legacy through the intersections of art and environmentalism. One goal for the FCC is to increase awareness of these guided tours and the building will have adjoining outdoor terraces and paths that connect to Olana’s historic carriage road network, making all 250 acres of the historic landscape an integral part of public interpretation.

“It’s not a lot of space, but it includes an equal amount of outdoor space with places to sit and wait before you move through the landscape,” said Sawyer. “It’s really the next necessary step should there be more at Olana in the future, but this is the way we get to restore our collection which includes the farm, the barn, and all of the landscape, and have a sustainable maintenance plan for it.” 

“We’re imaging a space that in the regular ticketing hours is providing information about the tours, is giving you an overview of Church and where American art and environmental consciousness intersect but then come 6 pm and there’s a special program about someone with a book on the Catskills that changes over and they’re able to show their PowerPoint or video or do that and then on Sunday evening there's a wedding reception.”

Finding Space in a Historic Landscape

Landscape architectural firm Nelson Byrd Woltz utilized data maps, including a heat map that visualized current and potential human activity across the site to determine where the FCC would be located within Olana State Historic Site. They included the historic farm, Crown Hill, Ridge road, and the lake in their mapping activities. They also referred to an 1886 plan by Church to help better understand the 19th-century vision for Olana and how the 250-acre naturalistic landscape was to be connected by carriage roads and walking trails.

The Olana Partnership also identified a three-point historic corridor between the main house, the farm complex, and the lake and wanted to keep any new development outside this “historic core” to preserve Olana’s historic integrity. 

The selected site is adjacent to the existing entry from NY-9G by the lake, looking up towards the house. This location positions the FCC to serve as the principal entry point for Olana. “Some people have described it as like a base camp for Olana, which I like because it’s located immediately adjacent to one of Church’s historic planned views from the lake up to the house. It will provide a transitional space for visitors before diving into the world of Frederic Church.” said Sawyer. 

The location will also make it a highly visible, publicly accessible demonstration of sustainable design and carbon-neutral construction. 

Sustainable Design

In building Olana, Church focused on creating his own version of an American Eden by planting trees and embracing a naturalistic landscape to create his own wilderness. There was also the opportunity to use sustainable materials and to make the FCC a green building. 

“Assemblymember Didi Barret (D-106 Dutchess/Columbia) pushed us to make this project a better project, especially around its environmental stewardship,” said Sawyer. “She has wanted this to be the greenest building, sustainably designed, and she understands that this requires adequate funding to purchase long-lasting materials. She understands her influence and she is committed to environmental solutions,” said Sawyer. 

Assemblymember Barrett secured $1 million to support capital development plans for Olana, the largest single grant from the Assembly to a NYS Historic Site. Assemblymember Barrett also connected Olana with colleagues around the state, including faculty at The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF) in Syracuse; specifically with Professor Paul Crovella whose primary research focuses on sustainable construction. 

Faculty from SUNY ESF sat in on multiple presentations, provided advice, and met with architects from Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects and project engineers. “[SUNY ESF] is actively trying to build the capacity of the wood products industry in the state and that includes introducing the manufacturer of cross-laminated timber,” said Sawyer. “Most importantly, they’ve helped us realize the expense and the challenge to raise the funds are worth it because what we’re building will be the first publicly accessible model of engineered wood, cross-laminated timber frame in the state.” SUNY ESF will also work with Olana on the interpretation of that design for the public to help visitors understand what they are seeing in the materials used. 

Currently, the State Environmental Quality Review process is underway and the project was presented for public comment in late April and is anticipated to start construction in 2023. 

Leveraging a Collaborative Partnership

Olana has been a public/private partnership since the 1960s when the non-profit partnership then named “Olana Preservation” was incorporated and later transferred ownership to the New York State Historic Trust. Today the Olana Partnership operates all public programs and education programs as well as fundraising, marketing, and communications under a cooperative agreement with New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.

“This project, in particular, shows the strength of a public/private partnership to leverage both private dollars for public and public dollars for private,” said Sawyer. “From the very beginning of the planning process, it was The Olana Partnership board working closely with NYS Parks executives. Rose Harvey took a very direct role in the process. Olana was going to be a test case for capital funding to NYS Parks.” The former NYS Parks Commissioner Rose Harvey, who stepped down in 2018, helped to secure funding from then-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office to Olana, the first time since 1974 that there was designated capital funding for NYS Park. The Frederic Church Center is a cornerstone of Olana’s larger capital development plan. “She was really focused on Olana I think in part because of the very viable strong pattern that is here,” said Sawyer. “For the Frederic Church Center, there was an agreement for it being such a visible and new construction building, that the private nonprofit, our organization, would be able to effectively fundraise. It’s a balance of the public and private funding with public funding supporting infrastructure and private funding going to more visible aspects of the project.” 

Private and Public Funding Sources

The Olana Partnership has raised $7.5 million of the $11 million estimated cost for the Frederic Church Center with a goal of $10 million coming from private funding sources. In Round 11 of the Regional Economic Development Council (REDC), Olana was awarded a total of $3,268,776 –$1,868,776 from the New York State Energy and Development Authority (NYSERDA) that will support the development of a sustainably designed, carbon-neutral building with the goal to make the FCC a threshold to an immersive visitor experience of Olana as a unique, world-class carbon-neutral tourist destination at the intersection of American art and environmental consciousness. An award of $1,400,000 from Empire State Development will directly support building construction with the goal to increase Olana’s regional economic impact.

“This is not about in any way diminishing the role of the main house and its historic interiors and the decorative arts at Olana but rather about making the experience of them for people who visit more impactful,” said Sawyer. “It’s about having a real culmination of their visit by getting into the house and parallels in a way the historical experience of visiting Olana.”

Learn more about the Frederic Church Center here: https://www.olana.org/about/fccenter/

Cliff Laube is the public programs and communications manager at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Hyde Park, New York. Laube has been with the United States Federal Government for almost twenty-five years with experience in public programming, public affairs, and heritage tourism. 

Laube manages visitor services, operations, and the rental of conference facilities at the Roosevelt library’s Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center. He has managed volunteer programs at both Weir Farm National Historic Site in Wilton, CT (NPS) and the Roosevelt Library. Laube sits on two Library committees, the social media committee (founding member) and workplace culture committee (chair), and has helped develop and implement strategies to grow and maintain visitation to Dutchess County, New York historic sites as a board member of Dutchess Tourism, Inc.

He joined the MANY board of directors in 2021 as an ex-officio member and serves on the Marketing Committee.

Earlier this year, he took on the role of co-chair of the Program Committee. We spoke with him to learn more about his career path and what keeps him motivated.

What other jobs have you had in the museum field? Can you tell us about your journey to get to your current role?

As a student of historic preservation at Roger Williams University (RWU), I had a part-time job leading tours at the first water-powered cotton spinning mill in North America, Slater Mill Historic Site in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It is an extraordinary place. That was my first taste of working in the field of heritage tourism and helping to make our American story more accessible to a visiting museum public. After college, in 1998, I took a job as a park ranger at Weir Farm National Historic Site in Wilton, Connecticut -- one of our most inspirational national parks, commemorating the life and work of American impressionist painter J. Alden Weir, and his visiting artist friends, including Childe Hassam, Albert Pinkham Ryder, John Singer Sargent, and John Twachtman. I loved it. I loved helping people learn about this little-known but very important historic site. After six years at Weir Farm, in 2004, I came to the beautiful Hudson River Valley to manage publicity and public programs at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

Cliff Laube introducing the annual Hudson Valley History Reading Festival in 2022, the first in-person program since March 2020.

What other experiences in your career have you found most helpful for your role now?

I've certainly benefited from the training provided by both the National Park Service and the National Archives, but on-the-job experience has always helped me the most. To this day, I feel strongly that -- at all levels of visitor/customer service work -- it's critical to regularly connect with museum visitors and program attendees. They know what they want and we should always know what they're thinking.

What is one of your biggest motivations to do what you do? What do you get excited about in your role as the Public Programs and Communications Manager at FDR Presidential Library and Museum?

As a civil servant, the single biggest motivation (of which there are many) is striving to do good work for the American people. I work with a team of federal employees who took an oath, believe in what they do, and continue to perform at a very high level of performance to provide access to the authentic material culture of the life and times of the Roosevelts. We strive to make the museum and programming experiences here as authentic as the collections we are charged with protecting. Every day is exciting with this as a goal. 

Cliff Laube at NewsRadio 1450 WKIP promoting FDR Presidential Library and Museum’s 2019 Memorial Day Weekend World War II reenactment

 

What are some of your goals?

​​As the Roosevelt Library matures, we've been able to tackle topics that this institution hasn't focused on enough over the years since President Roosevelt created the LIbrary in 1941. I hope to continue to expand programming on topics such as Japanese American Incarceration, America's response to the Holocaust, the Roosevelts and Race, and FDR's disability. The Roosevelts were faced with many difficult decisions in their lives and careers, and we can learn a lot from the choices they ultimately made by trying to better understand why they made them based on the documentary evidence in our collections.

Would your 18-year-old self imagine that you would be where you are today?

No, at 18, I really wanted to be an architect. My educational path bounced around through the fields of landscape architecture, architectural design, and eventually historic preservation. Preservation was the discipline that finally grounded me and helped me explore how historic sites, our built environment, and our tangible history can give us a better understanding of who we are today. Two RWU professors, in particular, Philip Marshall and Michael Swanson, guided me on this path.

Can you tell us about where you grew up? What was it like growing up there? Where did you go to school?

I was born and raised in Connecticut, Milford and then Southbury. It was a fairly standard, middle-class upbringing in a close-knit community that we watched evolve from rural to suburban due to the development of a new IBM research facility in the 1980s. I lived in an older, less affluent section of town, but had a privileged childhood in a caring, hard-working family, with loving parents and two older sisters.

What was the first museum experience that you can remember?

My first museum experience was on a field trip to a small museum called the American Indian Archaeological Institute in Washington, Connecticut (now called the Institute for American Indian Studies). I remember my fascination with the buildings created in the replica Algonkian village there.   

Cliff is a “regular dunkee” at the summertime Family Fun Festival

Can you describe a favorite day on the job?

I think my favorite moment at the Library so far was during the question-and-answer session following a book talk about 12 years ago. The author flipped the script in Q&A and asked the first question of a captive Hyde Park audience of about 60 people. She wanted to know to what extent Hyde Park residents were aware of FDR’s disability back in the ‘30s and ‘40s. After contracting polio at the age of 39, Roosevelt could never again walk unassisted. She unexpectedly got a firsthand account. One of Hyde Park’s longtime residents told a story from his childhood. He described a day in which FDR arrived late to church. Around the time he noticed the President wasn’t there yet, the hair stood up on his arms. A moment later, he then heard softly, and then louder, the sound of metal braces coming closer and closer to the open doorway of St. James Church. He knew -- without turning around -- the President had arrived. FDR’s disability was so much a part of who he was to those who lived and worked around him that it hardly registered as a disability at all. The audience was transfixed. We all had goosebumps. We all heard FDR approaching that door. For me, that program rose above the rest.

Do you have any key mentors or someone who has deeply influenced you? Is there any piece of advice that they gave you that you’ve held onto?

​​I do. Lynn Bassanese, the former Library Director at the presidential library, was an incredible boss, friend, and mentor, during the most formative professional years of my career. I am, without question, where I am -- and, most importantly, happy where I am -- because of her guidance. Lynn had a small piece of paper beside her computer (it's besides mine now) with an unattributed saying, "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always." She lives by that. And I try to. If your work involves any level of visitor/customer service, working towards this mindset can be an enlightening and transformative experience.

You have an entire museum/collection to yourself. What do you do?

I'm a big World's Fair buff. Especially the two New York fairs at Flushing Meadows. While I am too young to have experienced them myself, both my parents went to both the '39 and '64 fairs and loved them. My grandfather was Suburban News Editor for the New York Times and lived in Richmond Hill not far from the fairgrounds, as well. So, I think I would love to run around the Queens Museum -- a building that dates back to the first of the NYC fairs -- and explore all the nooks and crannies for remnants of the fairs. Of course, the amazing Panorama of the City of New York from the '64 fair is still on display there and it would be fun to have time -- by myself -- to inspect it more closely.

Dear Friends, Members, and Supporters,

I am pleased to share the news that the New York State Legislature passed A.9710/S.8934 “An act in relation to conducting a study of public and private museums in New York state,” unanimously in the Assembly on May 24 and in the Senate on June 2. This bill will make a difference to every museum in the state regardless of budget size, discipline, or location. It now heads to Governor Hochul’s desk where her signature would enable the act to take effect immediately. 

New York State's museums are inextricably linked to our communities, economies, and histories. Too many museums operate in a culture of scarcity, struggling to pay bills and wondering each year how they will keep their doors open. Museums need support to ensure they can protect and share their collections, to be strong community education partners and efficient economic engines generating $5.37B to the state's economy.

“Museums have long been synonymous with New York – from world famous icons like the Met, MoMA or Cooperstown to local history collections and cultural community hubs. Yet despite the fame and significant economic impact, our museum sector has no real “home” in the New York state government,” said Assembly Bill Sponsor Didi Barrett (AD 106). “Support for museums is spread across a host of state agencies, and many have no access to state funding at all. This legislation is a pathway to ensuring these beloved institutions have the support and stability to flourish in the 21st century.”

The Museum Study Act directs the New York State Department of Economic Development, in conjunction with the Empire State Development Corporation, Department of Education, Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Department of Environmental Conservation, Department of State, and New York State Council on the Arts to conduct a study of public and private museums in New York State.It will identify and gather data about all museums in the state including information on size, hours of operation, visitor statistics, funding sources and amounts, and the subject of their collections. The report will help communities, legislative representatives, and individual supporters learn about museum missions, audiences, and funding needs.

“New York State is the proud home of museums, large and small. From world class art galleries to volunteer run historical societies; these institutions are part of the fabric of our communities across the state,” said Senate Bill Sponsor Jeremy A. Cooney (SD 56). “They tell our stories, enrich our lives, employ creative talent and keep dollars in our local economies. As important as museums are to New York, these institutions lack an established funding structure in state government. I am proud to have passed new legislation directing a multi-agency team to conduct a study of public and private museums to ensure the protection of collections and an equitable funding structure in the future.”

The speed at which this bill was passed is a powerful sign that your legislator knows how important your museum is to your community. As they wrap up their time in Albany, it would mean so much for you to take a minute to thank the legislators who represent your museum and let them know that you are grateful for their support. Share an example that helps define your museum as a community space. Does your museum reach an historically marginalized population? Is it a destination for tourists? Or share a unique program/event offered by your museum. Include statistics to help illustrate your museums' impact and reach. Have they been to visit lately? Invite them for a tour of your museum! Feel free to use this template for your letter.

You can be sure we will let you know what comes next!

 

With thanks,

Erika Sanger

Executive Director

Find your Assembly Member Here

Find your Senator Here 

Click here to view Assembly Bill A9710

Click here to view Senate Bill S8934

“Quiet as It’s Kept” 2022 Whitney Biennial

Dear Friends, Members, and Colleagues, 

Two years ago today, George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Yesterday, nineteen elementary school children and their two teachers were shot to death in Texas. Eleven days ago, ten Black people were murdered in a mass shooting in Buffalo. In our nation alone, over one million people have died from the coronavirus. Numbers like these can become meaningless without connections to people and actions that move us to change.  

As our cultures, institutions, and educational systems attempt to respond to the devastation wrought by the pandemic and systemic racism, every one of us needs to play a role in changing our society and our museums. Our museums need to promote truth and dignity, to encourage every person on staff to take ownership of their work, and to respect the work of their colleagues no matter their position or title. 

Lately, more people are talking about uplifting people, not objects. I understand the purpose but question a distinction that removes contemporary and historic makers, scientists, and artists -- those who are named and those whose names are not remembered -- from the products of their hands and their minds. Implementing human-centered values in our workplace does not require the exclusion of the art and material culture of our world. In fact, centering and being inspired by art and culture can lead to embracing diversity in all its forms. 

So how can museums - with collections, without collections - push back against the darkness of our times? We can take one step at a time. We can create budgets that align to strategic plans, value our staff, fund professional development, and allow for the purchase of job-appropriate tools. 

In the May 2022 issue of This Month in NYS Museums we launch our reformatted job board that will require employers to post salary ranges. It took us a bit longer than some, but not as long as others, to make this change. New York City will legally require salary transparency in job postings on November 1, 2022. I am proud that MANY did not wait for a law to catch up to our values.

This week we also announced the recipients of the NYSCA/MANY Capacity Building Partnership Grants. The review panels were particularly struck by the requests from dozens of museums for technology because they had been “operating” with decades old hardware and software. We are pleased that we were able to help NYSCA distribute over $500,000 to 102 museums. We know that those who were not awarded grants or did not qualify as museums using NYSCA’s guidelines were very disappointed. We will announce new opportunities for grant funding soon. 

Yesterday, A9710 (Barrett D-106) “An act in relation to conducting a study of public and private museums in New York State” unanimously passed the Assembly. The study will identify and collect data about all museums in the state to inform policy making and recommend systems of support to ensure equitable distribution of state funds regardless of discipline, budget size, or location.

The bill is now moving through the Senate. Your New York State Senator needs to know that they have museums in their district that need help to serve their communities and preserve their collections for future generations. Please send an email today and ask them to support S.8934 (Cooney D-56). You can find your Senator here and use this document as a template for your email. 

We are approaching change for our museums in so many ways. This one step will help us get closer.

With sincere thanks, 

Erika Sanger, Executive Director