Dallas Museum of Art’s new Eugene McDermott Director Maxwell Anderson just announced to the Junior Associates Circle that the Museum is talking about going FREE!!!
Speaking at a meet-and-greet reception at the Talley Dunn Contemporary in Dallas after being introduced by Ms. Dunn, herself a previous Junior Associate 20 years before, Anderson gave guests an insight as to the new direction he envisions for the DMA.
“The vast majority of our money is not from membership. Everyone will get free membership. Current members will be called Patrons and Partners. I’d rather get a million dollars from one person than hundreds of thousands of people giving me scratch. People who donate $100 or less actually cost us money to entertain them. We’re moving to being a more city-based museum free for everyone.”
Anderson is the go-to guy when it comes to how to measure success in museums. Back in 2004, Getty Leadership Institute commissioned him (at the time a Research Fellow with Princeton University) to write a provocative piece for their Compleat Leader online resource library, entitled, “Metrics of Success in Art Museums.” The piece endures and still attract readers to this day. On June 16, 2012, Anderson added MOCA-related comments to the essay.
Although, Anderson mentioned twice that attendees were the first to hear about the possibility of free membership and said (with a smile) not to tell anyone yet, those who saw him speak at the May 2nd lecture at the DMA discussing his new book The Quality Instinct: Seeing Art Through a Museum Director’s Eye and again on May 10th during “A Conversation on Collecting” with museum philanthropists and curators know he is all about transparency for the museum. Upon arrival from his previous leadership role at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Anderson installed the Dallas Museum of Art Dashboard for direct-access to information previously only available to major donors or by request. He, himself, regularly tweets, and during his lectures so far and in the Director’s Welcome on the DMA webpage, encourages bi-direction conversations through Facebook and Twitter and promises that technology will be a major conduit for access to museum information.