Museum Practice. Группа авторов

Street West Art & Design District in downtown Toronto. In an almost unanimous vote, the City Council funded this move and signed the museum’s 10-year lease on a former textile factory that was renovated to serve as a gallery. Between 1999 and 2004 the MOCCA Advisory Board and the people of Toronto fought hard and successfully raised the museum’s profile and proved its value, not only to the arts and cultural community, but also to the overall cultural landscape of the City of Toronto.

      As a line department in the City’s Culture division, the City used MOCCA to realize its plans to revitalize and brand distinct neighborhoods in downtown Toronto. With MOCCA as an anchor, the Queen Street West neighborhood has developed its character as an epicenter for art, design, and creativity in Toronto, Canada, North America, and the world. The relationship is one of mutual benefit.

      After ten years in its downtown location, MOCCA continues to grow. Its visibility and presence has attracted important partnerships: in November 2010 the National Gallery of Canada launched a three-year program under which that Ottawa institution will co-organize and co-present exhibitions of art from its collection in partnership with Toronto’s MOCCA.

      Following its move downtown, MOCCA’s relationship with the City shifted to more of an arm’s-length status, providing MOCCA with discretion to administer and allocate its budget. MOCCA staff report to the City through the managing director. The City provided operating funds and a number of “in-kind” services for the museum. The museum could do some fund-raising; however, it did not have the liberty to issue its own tax-deductible receipts (the City issued the tax receipts), and at times was restricted in terms of the types of donations that it could receive. Finally, in 2012 MOCCA changed its status once again, becoming an independent not-for- profit institution in order that it could do its own fund-raising and issue its own tax- deductible receipts for donations. This new status is expected to give MOCCA more organizational freedom to grow into a world-class center for contemporary art.

      MOCCA’s Advisory Board has therefore become a Governing Board. It has been a driving force in enabling the museum to become a successful growing arm’s-length institution as opposed to a passive line item department as it was in its original incarnation in North York. In 2008, under the stewardship of the managing director, the Board introduced strategic and governance planning exercises (which our firm assisted with) to gear the museum up for its next major change in governance: initially something between an “arm’s length” institution and an independent not-for-profit, which they called a “hybrid model.” Under these circumstances, MOCCA would have more freedom in terms of its fund-raising and revenue generating activities. Its Advisory Board transitioned into a Governing Board, with fiduciary responsibility and more accountability to the public. Through this process, MOCCA was once again evolving to become more independent. The City continued to provide off-site collection storage space, but as of 2012 MOCCA acquired a fully independent status.

As its Board has undergone this change, MOCCA has gone to great lengths to consider what it means to represent, build, and lead a museum. During the Livent days, the Gallery’s Director and Curator did not have to report to a Board. While exhibitions at the Art Gallery of North York spoke to and represented Toronto’s diverse public, it was not a requirement of Livent’s in order for the Gallery to receive funding. The museum’s new status relies heavily on support and buy-in from the public. Consequently, the MOCCA board is considering the museum’s broad pool of stakeholders as potential resources for funding, audience, and overall support. Their presence and participation are essential to the gallery’s operations and survival, whereas before they were passive patrons.

      Toronto has been defined as the most diverse municipality on the planet, with the largest number of communities of 20,000 people or more speaking a language other than English. More than half of Toronto’s population was born elsewhere. As the Board prepares to recruit new members and strengthen its leadership, it is addressing the need to include the city’s ethnographically diverse communities, diverse professional backgrounds, and developing adequate, transparent procedures in order to be accountable to the public. The museum’s programs will also need to draw in broader audiences to attract a strong membership.

      MOCCA is indeed transforming into a civil society museum, acknowledging that every area of its governance and operations require diverse participation from the public at large. The future of this still-evolving institution is full of challenge, and of hope.

Note

      1 1 The Corcoran has subsequently negotiated an agreement to transfer its collections to the ownership of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, while another educational institution is taking over the Art College.

References

      Anderson, Gail, ed. 2000. Museum Mission Statements: Building a Distinct Identity. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums.

      Anderson, Gail, ed. 2004. Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

      Carver, John. 1997. Boards that Make a Difference: A New Design for Leadership in Non-profit and Public Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

      Fisher, H. 1995. Welcome to the Board: Your Guide to Effective Participation. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.

      Florida, Richard. 2003. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.

      Lord, Barry, and Gail Dexter Lord. 2009. The Manual of Museum Management, 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.

      Malaro, Marie. 1994. Museum Governance: Mission Ethics Policy. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

      Ross, V. 1999. “Big City Gallery: What Happens When You Pull the Rug Out from Under an Art-World Success Story?” Canadian Art 16(4): 62.

      Simon, Nina. 2010. The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz, CA: Museum 2.0.

      Weil, Stephen. 2004. “Rethinking the Museum: An Emerging New Paradigm.” In Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, edited by Gail Anderson, 74–79. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.

Further Reading

      Cornforth, Chris. 2005. The Governance of Public and Non-profit Organisations: What Do Boards Do? Routledge Studies in the Management of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organisations. London: Routledge Psychology Press.

      Falk, John. 2006. Thriving in the Knowledge Age: New Business Models for Museums and Other Cultural Institutions. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.

      Lord, Barry, Gail Dexter Lord, and Lindsay Martin. 2012. Manual of Museum Planning: Sustainable Space, Facilities, and Operations. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.

      Lord, Gail Dexter. 2007. “Museums Outside-In.” Conference Proceedings of the 21st ICOM General Conference, 90–97. Vienna: ICOM. Accessed September 20, 2014. http://icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/ICOM_2007/2007_Proceedings_eng.pdf.

      Macdonald, Sharon, ed. 2011. A Companion to Museum Studies. Oxford: Blackwell.

      Oster, Sharon, and William Goetzmann. 2003. “Does Governance Matter? The Case of Art Museums.” In The Governance of Not-for-Profit Organizations, edited by Edward L. Glaeser, 71–99. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, National Bureau of Economic Research. Accessed September 20, 2014. http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9966.pdf.

      Suchy, Sherene. 2004. Leading with Passion: Change Management in the 21st Century Museum. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.

      Barry Lord is Co-President of Lord Cultural Resources,