Unprecedented Leadership

“Unprecedented” is a word that we have heard repeatedly over the last year. During the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented has been used to describe economic, political, and social challenges of a scale not witnessed since the early 20th century. Museums have not been overlooked in this mix, as they change in response to societal upheavals. Newly confronted with an existential crisis during 2020, museum leadership has been called to reexamine the fundamentals of our practices. The relevance of museums in the 21st century has been spotlighted through the lens of systemic racism. This has sharpened the focus on poignant questions around museum practices including collections management, curatorship, audience development, programming, and not least leadership. Rightly so. Museum practices will change and as called out in the most recent issues of this journal by Fraser, the pandemic has wrought a time of reckoning and an uncertain future. With a breakdown of the old, comes the new. This is a precious time of transformation for museums and museum professionals. One among the many realizations the field has faced this past year is that new ways of doing business simply cannot be enacted on the old foundations. As the old foundations are shaken, the pillars toppled, and moral conflicts unveiled, the underlying values are laid bare. What values will endure? As the museum itself is redefined, the values that guide new leadership models will support and sustain a freshly born phoenix as it emerges from the ashes. Prior to the pandemic, when we published the call for papers for this special issue themed on “Museum Leadership in the 21st Century,” I had been thinking about how museum leaders balance change management—striving to be dynamic and responsive to critical challenges—while maintaining stability and alignment to the core missions of their organizations. As Director of the Museum Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University, I have had the privilege since 2013 of focusing on executive education for museum leaders. My work has primarily focused on helping others to see the potential of what lies before them. At the onset of each program, I am always struck by the cognitive dissonance among a cohort as they come to realize that the experts on how to transform museums are the ones gathered in the room—themselves. Like the readership of this journal, we learn collectively; we learn anew from one another on how to think about ourselves and the work we do in ways that we have not before. We are required to stretch and grow ourselves into a new reality. As Albert Einstein aptly asserted, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” Fraser’s editorial in this same issue offers the additional problem of legitimacy facing contemporary museum leadership, drawing on the debate surrounding the rebuilding of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The papers in this issue all respond to a central concern for sustainability. That is, “How can leadership ensure the continued relevance and future of museums?” There cannot be one clear answer that emerges from this set of papers. Consistent with the normal cycles of change, this collection presents a broad range of alternative paths—a testing ground of practices still unfolding. Together, they point toward a greater intentionality in the efforts to develop museum leaders and leadership models that foster diversity, inclusion, equity, and access. They identify key enduring values and the skills that are effective at leading change in that direction. Our intention with this issue was two-fold. First, to gather and present organizational development models, theory, and research that offer innovative directions for the role of leadership and leader development. Second, to present case studies that have dug deep into new leadership practices and identify the challenges, lessons, and outcomes that can lead to new ground. The papers in this issue excel in these areas. The issue is organized with the discourse moving from an internal to external focus—beginning with organizational models and leader development, to shifts in curatorial authority, then outward to communities, to implications around new practices with digital technology. The first three papers present organizational models for working together and with museum constituents. Also revealed are the underlying values and leadership skills required to make such models effective in practice. Ravenal offers a forum paper describing a first-hand analysis of crisis and change management. Ravenal’s explication of the lifecycle model and the formation of a key partnership illuminates the importance of several leadership skills, most notably commitment and strategic agility. The next paper by Carr outlines a compelling and data-driven case for cultivating board age diversity for a sustainable philanthropic future. Underlying this argument is the essential value of equity that must be in place to recruit and develop young board members. A call for equitable practices to support our fieldwide shift away from a hierarchical top-down model of leadership is also made in the next paper. Whitaker discusses a model prioritizing people and pay equity in art museums for playing a long game of financial sustainability. The author explores the controversial parameters of deaccessioning, while also underscoring empathy as both a value and skill. In the next section, the papers spotlight the importance of professional development. Johnson and Sobczak survey museum and academic library professionals, gathering their perceptions of leadership and leader development opportunities. The data reveals a perceived gap in access to leadership training. In the next paper, Chandler, Korn and Marzec explicate the theory of the museum as a “learning organization,” a model where staff and the organizational systems are supported in their response to continual changes for improvement. This dynamic model is built on two key premises that promise to strengthen practices: first, the perception of being able to learn to lead facilitates the enactment of leader development; and second, staff have the potential to lead from any place in the organization. Museum leadership has long been in the hands of those deemed to have expertise. The book reviewed by Rasmussen, The Art of Curating: Paul J. Sachs and the Museum Course at Harvard, details the case study of an influential museum training program and the parameters of what it meant to be an expert in the early 20th century. McClellan’s book is also a valuable contribution to the scarce literature on historical museum figures and the history of professionalism. In contrast to Sachs's future museum directors, Jareš profiles the museum directors as determined entrepreneurs in his review of the National Film Museum in Prague —one case within a growing sector of start-up museums. The next cluster of papers explore case studies that outline leadership models for working more collaboratively across the institution and with communities. Each thesis explores the negotiation of authority that is inherent within shared power dynamics. Viau-Corville presents an argument for traditional curatorship giving way to “managerial curatorship” by studying this practice in Canadian and Brazilian contexts and its role in fostering professional development as well as strengthening work in the heritage sector. Next, Pegno and Brindza describe a new model of multivocal curatorship. Their case study explores the shift from a hierarchical to a collaborative and community-based approach as it currently take shapes at the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block. The third paper details the shift from institutional authority to visitor agency to create inclusive STEM learning environments. The distributed and transformational leadership models for science centers outlined by the authors (Letourneau, Bennett, Culp, Mohabir, Schloss, Liu, and Honey) proffer these 21st century leadership skills and values: articulate aspirational goals, honor diverse expertise, support risk-taking and experimentation, and guide reflection. The final paper by Butcher examines digitization—a virtual frontier expanded by the pandemic—for impactful learning experiences and its leadership challenges. As guest editor of this issue, I would like to thank the authors for their contributions and commitment to writing during this time filled with pressing concerns, and for their peer-review work that helped us all think together about what this issue could say. A special thanks to John Fraser, Editor, for supporting our efforts to bring this issue together. As we emerge from the pandemic, the metaphorical phoenix born of fire, like our profession, is organic, alive, energized, and resilient. The articles in this issue are a testament to the unprecedented leadership practices already underway that will transform the future. Antoniette M. Guglielmo, Associate Editor (toni.guglielmo@cgu.edu) is Director of the Museum Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University and Project Director of POLARIS: The Museum Mentor Network.

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