Mon 28th February 2011 14:58
Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude: a creative partnership
After thirty-four interviews with people running theatres and galleries involving days spent on trains travelling from Newcastle to St Ives via Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool and Walsall, a daytrip from York to Margate, and what seems like weeks at the computer writing and editing the final report, I’ve finally completed my research into joint leadership models.
In the first of a series of four posts drawing on the research, I outline what led me to undertake the research and what the report covers:
Why do we need a new leadership model in the visual arts?
‘The traditional route to senior roles in the visual arts has been curatorial and so that’s the skills-base people start with and value […] So I think there’s a sense within the visual arts that as long as you’re a good curator that’s the most important thing – that’s going to get you profile and that will lead to a senior position.’
The vast majority of art galleries and museums in the UK are run by people who began their careers as curators and this has been the traditional career path for gallery directors since exhibition galleries first emerged after the Second World War.[i] But running an art gallery or museum in 2011 is far more challenging than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. Those seeking to lead galleries and museums today can no longer expect to learn all the fundraising, business, managerial and strategic skills they need in today’s environment while ‘on the job’. Nor – I would argue – can curators single-handedly expect to master all these diverse skills alongside their core expertise of continually developing their knowledge of artistic practice.
Over the past 10-15 years we have begun to see the emergence of Deputy Director and more recently Executive Director roles in the visual arts, often during periods of major growth (such as capital developments) or in response to major change. Executive and Deputy Directors are not the same: Executives tend to report directly to the Board, and play a strategic role, which includes responsibilities for organisation-wide decisions such as business planning and programming; Deputies tend to be more operational and have limited authority.
Career paths for visual arts managers are fragmented. We lose many managers who have developed a working knowledge of the sector to other non-profit and arts organisations for a variety of reasons. These include lack of recognition, poor pay and conditions and lack of career progression opportunities. Validating management as a valuable career route, to attract and retain skilled staff, is critical to the future health of this sector – as is improving the understanding of the benefits of management. The two are interdependent.
For cultural reasons, many visual arts organisations prefer to recruit single leaders (and curators specifically) although interviewees felt that there is a problem with supply of suitably experienced candidates. Research into the university sector shows that for knowledge-rich organisations (such as art galleries) having leaders who understand the core business is important for standards and internal and external credibility. It also has a demonstrable impact on business performance.
Art galleries and museums should be led by those with a deep understanding of our core mission. But the core business of arts organisations is not just the art product – it is equally the way we engage people with the art and yet we very rarely appoint learning or marketing experts to executive leadership roles in visual arts. We might take it for granted that curators have this knowledge of ‘the core business’, but they do not necessarily have expert knowledge (or a vision) about how people engage with art. Curators should lead art galleries and museums, but so should other visual arts professionals with expertise in audience engagement, such as learning and marketing staff. And if we want to develop a wider and stronger pool of future leaders in the visual arts then we need to value management and leadership and encourage curators to develop their competencies in these areas, alongside their curatorial expertise.
Purpose and approach of this research
‘People have been allowed to carry on as ‘king-curators’ devising their programmes in isolation – touring used to be much more common than it is today. We can’t tolerate any longer people who just want to do their own thing and just want to look to their international counterparts for their kudos. Their organisations will sink. The financial basis on which they operate will be so different – so they’ll need to find new sources of income and collaborate more to make best use of resources.’
Leaders of art galleries and museums face undeniably significant challenges in the coming decade. Outside the capital most art galleries and museums are heavily reliant on public subsidy for revenue funding and have not yet developed a range of reliable or sizeable income streams through fundraising or trading. With public funding of galleries now set to fall sharply at local, regional and national levels it is as yet hard to see where alternative income will be found.
More worrying still is the failure of increased public investment in arts facilities and activities to translate into a larger, more diverse and more engaged audience base for the contemporary visual arts nationally. Attendance levels for galleries and art museums as a whole have plateaued during this period of growth so that the average level of subsidy per visitor to an Arts Council-funded gallery has increased by 28%.[ii] There are also systemic problems with workforce development and diversity in the sector leading to ‘a crisis of leadership’.[iii]
Recent research[iv] reveals a sector which is over-extended and under-capitalised – in other words lacking the resilience and capacity to respond to a rapidly changing operating context where major shifts in funding, audience behaviour and technology are disrupting business models across the arts and wider society. All artforms are facing these challenges, but in the visual arts we have the added ‘problem’ of free entry. Just as the newspaper industry struggles to find a new business model in an era of free online content, we too have an existing audience base which is accustomed to free access to our core product.
My research sets out to ask whether new leadership models would be helpful, given this context. It looks at the joint leadership approach in theatre which developed around thirty years ago largely in response to a more complex and uncertain financial model. The report considers theatre’s joint model, characterised by a double-headed structure of Artistic Director and Executive Director and a more collaborative style of leadership, and asks whether it offers any benefits beyond the single Director approach preferred in the visual arts.
Theatre has its own culture and challenges, and the changes we need in the visual arts will not be found through uncritically importing models from other sectors. But by understanding better how theatre is responding to similar pressures and comparing the two sectors we can shed light onto some of the deeply embedded assumptions we hold, which may stand in the way of discovering new strategies that will enable our organisations to thrive in tough times.
The research was undertaken through a series of semi-structured interviews with those involved in leading galleries, art museums and theatres, and a review of management and leadership literature. Thirty-four interviews were completed to capture the full range of leadership models in both sectors. Many in the theatre sector had experienced different permutations of the two main models – single and joint leadership – at different stages in their careers. Others were interviewed for their experience as Trustees or in recruitment of leaders.
The report aims to do three things:
- For Boards and visual arts leaders, the report presents the case for reconsidering our leadership models (structures and approaches) in the visual arts.
- For Boards and those seeking to recruit and develop leaders in the visual arts, the report offers:
- practical advice about the range of leadership options and the context each model suits best;
- findings relating to the competencies and structures required for joint leadership models, and collaborative leaders more widely, to be effective (section five)
- an outline description of the roles and requirements for EDs (section three).
3. Finally, for all those working in the visual arts, I hope this report stimulates further discussion about our wider values in the non-profit sector and the critical need for a step-change in our approach to audiences, enterprise, management capacity and continuing professional development.
You can download the Executive Summary and Full Report here.
[i] With the exception of the Whitechapel Gallery, which was founded in 1903, most of the exhibition galleries that now form the backbone of the contemporary arts infrastructure emerged since the 1960s. For more information of the development of the gallery infrastructure in England see Claire Glossop, 2003. ‘A revolution in the gallery: From the Arts Council to the artist’, in Sculpture in 20thcentury Britain, vol.1, ed. Penelope Curtis, Leeds: Henry Moore Institute.
[ii] Sara Selwood, 2008. Towards developing a strategy for contemporary visual arts collections in the English regions, Arts Council England, London, pp.32-33 and Table 1. Selwood calculates subsidy per attendance rising from £3.40 per visit in 2004/05 to £4.35 per visit in 2006/7 among ACE funded galleries.
[iii] Arts Council England, 2006. Turning Point: a strategy for the contemporary visual arts. London: Arts Council England, p.25.
[iv] For a summary of the evidence around capitalisation of the arts and cultural sector see section 3.1 of Margaret Bolton, Clare Cooper, Claire Antrobus, Joe Ludlow & Holly Tebbutt, 2011. Capital Matters: how to build financial resilience in the UK’s arts and cultural sector, London: Mission, Models and Money. In terms of the visual arts, Susan Royce concludes ‘Most visual arts organisations are under-capitalised’, in Susan Royce, 2010. Business models in the visual arts. Draft published report. Arts Council England: London, p.2.
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I agree that a mixture of skills at the top is highly beneficial for arts organisations and museums, though I think that sometimes these skills can exist in a senior management team with a single director.
Your report doesn’t mention the British Museum’s short-lived attempt at a joint leadership model: between 1999 and 2001, existing director Robert Anderson was joined by Suzanna Taverne, with experience in finance and publishing but not museums, in the new post of Managing Director. It may have been an issue of personalities rather than structure, but Taverne subseuqently resigned after Anderson announced his retirement, and the trustees advertised for a single replacement. (In place of the joint model the museum then appointed Neil MacGregor, one of the most widely admired directors of his generation, but I suspect that he has an effective team around him – how else would he have found the time to record all those hours of A History of the World?)
It is interesting that no other major museum or gallery has, as far as I’m aware, tried the joint model since. To some extent this slightly sorry tale (there was negative press coverage at the time) reinforces your points about the importance of recruitment and succession planning, and as you imply this is an area where best practice is as yet not wholly developed. I wonder how you see this area developing in the visual arts, and whether you would agree that boards need human resources expertise amongst their trustees, in addition to expert advice from outside.
Hi Jack – thanks for your comment. I agree the most important thing is to have the right skills (and I’d add values/outlook) at the top of the organisation and that can – and does – happen with single Directors as well as joint leadership teams.
The example of the BM you cite – of which I don’t know the detail although I did interview people who mentioned it – highlights, as you suggest, the complexity of recruiting into (and succession when 1 party leaves) a joint exec model. Your suggestion that Board need HR expertise is a good one – although perhaps that can be time-limited (from an executive search company) rather than by having HR expertise on the Board? Certainly my research (and previous experience as a funder working closely with Boards of RFOs) makes me conclude the role of the Boards in recruitment (and monitoring/support) of all leaders – not just joint execs – is a critical one. Most Boards I’ve worked with would need external help for appointing a leader.
It is hard – when partnerships work or fail – to decipher what’s down to individuals, and what’s down to the structure itself. But – as I outline in the report – some partnerships are doomed to failure because of the types of leaders selected into them (ie joint leaders have to be collaborative leaders and respect the ‘other side’ of the business – it’s no good appointing a ‘safe pair of hands’ alongside an AD who isn’t prepared to support them -or an ED who isn’t passionate about the art side of things).
In the visual arts – in the national museums sector – we have seen the joint leadership model emerge fairly recently (at Tate St Ives and Tate Liverpool) and in the decade to come I’d wager we’ll see strengthening of the entrepreneurial and audience-focussed capacity in many of our orgs. Whether that’ll be in joint execs I can’t say at this stage. BUt as I outline in section 1 of the report something needs to change pretty fast within the leadership and management structure of the visual arts. (and sometimes what we see is that decision being left too late and then a CEO model being brought it to turnaround and organisation in crisis).
Do you think the joint model has uses in the museums sector? I was looking mainly at art museums and contemporary galleries (and theatre as a comparison) so didn’t consider the wider museums sector. Be interested to see whether you think some of the same challenges apply – and whether the ‘solutions’ I suggest would also apply to museums more generally?
Hi Claire. I think we could have a whole other debate about what skills are required for Boards – in my experience of charities within and without the cultural sector, the mix is rarely perfect.
I agree that executive search input would be useful for appointments, but that doesn’t address embedding succession planning, or the wider issues your report covers about professional development. I think a HR professional/CIPD member would be an asset to many Boards – after all, if there’s no professional development expertise on a Board, is it any wonder that there isn’t a stronger focus on professional standards and development within an organisation? That focus would surely be stronger if it was championed at Board level – not necessarily by a specialist, but it’s certainly one option.
I’m not sure about the relevance of the joint model to museums (or heritage organisations) as opposed to art galleries. As I said in the previous post, I think a broad range of skills and perspectives at senior management level is beneficial – in museums that includes a perspective on learning (not just academic learning) as well as collections.
The average museum director has less of a pivotal creative role than an artistic director/ art museum director; there are a very few showpeople with a public profile, who take a strong personal interest in what their museums do (I can think of one who was personally rearranging objects in cases half an hour before a private view – which didn’t give a very positive message to the exhibition team). But that is an exception – most have got to where they are because they balance museum (usally curatorial, very occasionally learning) expertise with management capabilities, so the joint model is less relevant.
As you say, though, a more entrepreneurial approach is likely to be necessary. This may come partly by bringing in new people from outside the sector – something that several larger independent museums have done already for director/chief executive positions. I don’t know the museums in question well enough to assess the impact of this on the curatorial leadership of the organisation, but as with anything else I suspect it varies depending on both individual and organisation.