Essay Instructions: I would like Jillbee7 if possible.
I am including within this email a copy of the previous Units. Unit 2 and 3 will help guide you in this process of Budgetary Museum cuts. There must be 10ten references, 4 pages, and a Bibliography. Any questions please email. I am Requesting Jillbee7 however any writer you have is acceptable. FIND 10 websites that assisted you in this assignment.
Required Work
Unit Four Assignment
Your new museum (the one you situated and staffed in Montana in Unit Two) is a great success. You have been extremely popular with the public. You have been in operation for five years. You survived the great crisis of Unit Three. Unfortunately, you now face a budgetary cutback of 40% due to a national economic downturn. You must immediately make decisions as to where to cut staff and operations. You now have close friends working for you in each of the museum’s major areas of operation. You have to cut the budget. You have to fire people. You must examine administrative structure, collections, research, public programs, building operations (security, etc.), and all other museum activities. You may cut in any area of the museum (this is part of your responsibilities as director). Consider the functional duties of each staff member before deciding to eliminate a position. Remember that certain positions, such as curators, attract outside grant and contract money. Remember that educational programs are strongly supported by the schools. Remember that collection care is a primary responsibility for the museum. Remember that if the museum closes to the public, there will not by further admission fees. You must defend your actions to the staff, your superiors, and the public. You must meet your ethical mandate to care for collections, but you must also meet your legal and ethical mandate to see that the museum is sound fiscally, while weathering the storms of change on its journey into the future. Above all, you cannot let the museum die financially and disappear, with the loss of all personnel, programs, and collections. Consider the full ramifications of each action you take.
1) Decide where the cuts will be made and write a one-page memo to your staff members indicating where these cuts will impact the museum (e.g., who will be fired) and what the impact will be on internal operations. This memo is for internal use only.
2) Write a one-page memo to your board or supervisor (if you are within a larger organization) explaining where the cuts are being made and what their impact will be on the future of the museum. This is for internal use only. [Hint: These memos must be different since you are dealing with different audiences. Do not repeat yourself.]
3) Prepare a two-page speech to be given to the public at a large rally that has been called in support of the museum during this difficult period. Tell them what you have decided and how this will make the museum better in the long term.
4) Prepare a table showing staffing and costs before and after the cuts. Your total cuts should equal $800,000 in annualized funds.
5) Be sure and examine several Web sites that advise on the content of a good memo to staff, a good memo to your supervisor(s), and a good speech.
6) List at least ten references that assisted you in making the decisions you did in dealing with this terrible fiscal crisis.
UNIT 2
Montana Museum of Native American Art
This is a proposal for developing and staffing a historical museum for the display and appreciation of Native American History and Art. The museum will be located in Billings, Jefferson County, Montana. The museum will be a private museum, funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Resort and Casino interests belonging to the National Congress of American Indians, with a budget of $2,000,000 a year.1 The National Congress of American Indians2 already has a collection of Native American art and artifacts, which it wishes to display and includes hundreds of thousands of art items in four major collection areas. A building to house the museum already exists in Billings, ready for the museum to move into and the director has been chosen. What remains is for staff to be hired and the budget allocated. Staff qualifications for curators and managers are that they have at least a B.A. in art history, museum studies, studio art, library science, or relevant field. Experience will be considered in lieu of a degree. 3
The collections include four areas of art: Paintings, Sculpture, Pottery and Crafts. These collections include both contemporary and historical pieces. According to Michael Wallace, “Although art galleries may have the greater funding and the stronger position within political consciousness, museums devoted to history are now more numerous and attract a much broader cross-section of museum visitors.”4
According to the International Council of Museums, the following was adopted in 1974 regarding the definition of a museum:
A museum is a non-profitmaking, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of man and his environment.5
According to Susan M. Pearce, “Holding and interpreting the human and natural heritage is what museums are all about; and it is the job of those who work in them to do this to the best of their abilities.”6 This museum demands the allegiance of all of their workers to maintain the collections and display the culture handed down to this present day by those who value the past and what it can teach us.
Therefore, the staff of the museum will be made up of many people who are specialists in their areas. The following (see table) are to be hired. Their salaries have been researched to match or exceed those of current museum staff all over the world. The salaries of museum personnel have been dwindling in most museums, and some countries have experienced strikes by museum workers because of this. Other museums may get by with reduced staff and salaries,7 but with the generous endowment given to this Museum of Native American History and Art, the following positions and salaries are assured. 8
Rank, Title and Number of EmployeesSalary,
No of Employees in this Rank
Total
$0--Director with overall responsibility
80,20180,2011-- Senior manager with heads of departments reporting to him or her
70,15170,1512—4 Senior Curators: over heads of four main departments, reporting to Rank 1
50,635
(X 4)205,5403—4 Junior middle managers, 4 commercial and 4 marketing managers. Rank 3 staff have supervisors and Junior managers reporting to them
30,729
(X 12)368,7484-- Junior manager: lowest level of management: 4 assistant keeper, 4 assistant curators and 2 heads of design and photography departments, 2 office managers.
20,887
(X 12)250,6445-- Supervisor, senior technician; supervisory staff, chief technician, assistant to specialists, senior secretary, graduate trainee.
19,687
(X 7)137,8096-- 1 Senior clerical staff person, 1 technician, minor supervisory roles of 1 senior clerk, 1 senior switchboard, 1 security supervisor. Also includes 2 junior trainee managers.
18,150
(X 7)127,0507-- Skilled grade: skilled but working under supervision, includes 2 craftspersons, 1 salaries and wages clerk, 1 work processor operator, and 3 attendants/security men.
17,416
(X 7)121,9128-- Semi-skilled grade: 1 general driver, 1 general clerk, 2 typist/receptionists.
16,786
(X 4)67,144Total55 Employees$1,429,199 Cleaning people and other contractors for landscape and repair work will be paid by annual contract or by the hour and are not included in the salary budget. The remainder of the budget not allocated for cleaning, landscaping and repair will be for operations and special exhibit expenses, which include advertising, extra security and entertainment.
The city of Billings already has one museum, the Yellowstone Art Museum, which exhibits contemporary art of the region, mostly Western art, “relevant to today’s West.” The Yellowstone Art Museum contains 3000 art objects and is not considered competitive with the type of museum the Native American History and Art Museum expects to be.9
The history of the state of Montana includes a long history of Native American settlements. When the territory was incorporated into the United States, several Indian reservations were located here: Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Crow Indian Reservation, Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation, Blackfeet Indian Reservation and the Flathead Indian Reservation. There are 15 universities and colleges in the State, both privately and state funded.
Montana is ranked 44th in population in the United States. In 2005, Montana’s population was estimated at 935,670 and has increased slightly every year from births and immigration. There are approximately 16,500 foreign-born state residents, accounting for 1.8% of the population. The center of population is located in Meagher County in White Sulphur Springs. A large part of the state is practically unpopulated, with large counties containing only 1-25 people per square mile. Golden Valley County only has 1,200 people, while Yellowstone County’s population is approximately 136,700, over 10 times the number.10
The geographical attractions in the State of Montana include large plains, mountains, rivers, and spectacular vistas. Vegetation includes pines, larch, fir, spruce, cedar, ash, alder, maple and cottonwood trees. Forests cover about 25% of the state. Flowers abound and include orchids and dryads. On the plains sagebrush and many species of grasses are common. The economy is primarily agricultural, with wheat, barley, sugar beets, oats, rye and other vegetables and fruit from gardens and trees. Cattle and sheep ranching, lumber and mineral extraction of gold, coal, silver, talc and vermiculite are part of the economical basis, along with tourism. Tourism brings in millions of visitors a year to Glacier National Park, Flathead Lake, the Missouri River, site of the Battle of Little Bighorn and three of the five entrances to Yellowstone National Park.
Works Cited
BIA. Tribal Budget Advisory Council for Best Western Kwa TaqNuk Resourt and Casino, Polson, Montana. Website at .
National Congress of American Indians. Website found at .
Official State of Montana Vacation, Recration, Accommodations and Travel Information. “Official State Travel Information Site.” (Census and other demographic information). Website found at .
Pacini, Marina. “Guidelines for College and University Galleries and Museums.” Southeastern College Art Conference. Oct 2004. .
Prospect. “Liverpool museum staff strike for fair pay.” Prospect Union for Professionals. News from the NEC. 24 Sep 2007. .
SDMA. San Diego Museum of Art. “Museum Staff.” .
Shaw, Phyllida. “The State of Pay.” Kavanaugh Gaynor, ed. Museum Provision and Professionalism by. Routledge Pub. 1994. Most of this book may be found online at .
“Staff House Museum.” Mining and Local History Museum, Kellogg, Idaho. Paragraph 15, .
State of Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks. “Popular Destinations.” Website found at .
Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, Jefferson County, Montana. Website found at .
1 BIA. Bureau of Indian Affairs/Tribal Budget Advisory Council for Resorts and Casinos. More information available at < http://www.ncai.org/BIA_Tribal_Budget_Advisory_Cou.181.0.html?&0=
2 The National Congress of American Indians is the largest Native American organization, and information about it and its many activities may be found at .
3 Pacini, paragraph 27.
4 Wallace, from Kavanaugh, p. 63.
5 Kavanaugh, Museum Provision and Professionalism, 1994. page 83.
6 Ibid. Page 62.
7 “Staff House Museum,” Mining and Local History Museum, Kellogg, Idaho. Paragraph 15.
8 SDMA, page 1.
9 Yellowstone Art Museum, information found at http://travel.mt.gov/categories/moreinfo.asp?IDRRecordID=564&siteid=1 - 35k
10 Website for the State of Montana may be found at http://www.visitmt.com
UNIT 3
When the crisis breaks, the Museum Director calls a meeting of the Museum Board for assistance in solving problems that have begun to arise. After his appeal, the members of the Board rise to the occasion with various suggestions. They call upon their friends and networks of professionals throughout the nation to help manage this crisis (Cato, 2003).
1. Through Board members’ personal friendship with a couple of popular writers in the news and art world, the museum director arranges for Time Magazine and ArtNews to cover the installation of the Blessed Virgin of Montana. During the press reception, the director makes an impassioned speech of praise for Ima Donor, who made this possible. The stories come out a week later, just as Ima Donor makes her call to the director’s office. While the introductory story in ArtNews is about the Virgin and what she is made of, the majority of the story is about the remarkable woman who has supported the museum so generously and how perceptive she is in matters of the future of art in Montana. The writer wonders at how Ms. Donor could be so intuitive and knowledgeable about the art world so as to encourage appointing these particular artists and academicians to choose the art of the future. “The best artworks take the viewer outside his or her comfort zone and provoke discussion and debate” (Ackley, 2007, p. 1).
The Time Magazine article, along with coverage of Ima Donor in a feature box, makes mention of the native materials that make up the clothes, face and hands of the virgin, as well as the beaver hide, another product of Montana, in the first section. The bison and deer products, and cicadas that are particularly choice food of Native Americans, are also noted as being unique to this exhibit.
2. The Native American representatives are invited to the special viewing of the installation of the Blessed Virgin of Montana, attended by the artist, who is also a Native American, and the writers from Time Magazine and ArtNews, who interview them all on their approval of the second section of the diptych. The representatives of the Montana Native Americans are so flattered and are so popular at the event that their protest over the first section is only politely listened to, while their approval of the second section is carefully covered. Museum staff lead tours of the other art objects in this particular exhibit, pointing out the relation of the rest of the Montana-oriented artworks to their Native American origins (Alexander, 1979). They are reminded of Heritage Tourism, one of the main reasons that people visit museums: Visitors travel long distances to see, learn about and experience cultural or natural objects, features, landscapes, people, sites, stories and events. “Visitors want to learn, see, and do! They travel to heritage sites for a mix of edutainment [sic] experiences” (Horn, 2007, para. 5)
3. The women activists who have voiced approval of the use of daycare by the Holy Mother are asked to be part of a panel of experts on childcare, along with directors and workers from the local daycare centers, by the MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) organization. The event makes a big splash in the local papers and is well attended by parents throughout the city. The Museum Director attends and is able to put in a word about the value of museums in the development of a child’s education and appreciation of fine art. This makes the paper and pleases the governor.
4. The governor of Montana and the senator are sent copies of the newspaper covering the Childcare panel, as well as copies of Time Magazine and ArtNews, along with a cover letter praising them for their perspicacity in becoming leaders of a state with such far-sighted museum directors, donors and artists, since this particular exhibition has now been nationally hailed as “ground-breaking” (Veverka, 2007).5. The Catholic bishop is sent a carefully-worded statement, written by a theologian, which the museum has underwritten, tying the predominance of Catholicism in Montana’s history to this icon and how the materials it is made up of are representative of various kinds of foods and symbols found in the Bible. The Holy Virgin, created from foodstuffs, is likened to the manna found in the desert by Moses. Her child, Jesus, made of cicadas, like the locust which God sent to free the Hebrew people. The bishop delivers a sermon on Sunday using just these points and no boycott is mentioned.
6. The director is thrilled that CNN and talk shows are calling to interview him, but he is careful to invite the Native American artist, Ima Donor, the governor, the senator, the Catholic bishop and a representative of the women activists to join him at the big press conference he schedules, and to accompany him to the talk shows. They all feign disinterest, but show up.
7. The director ignores Rush Limbaugh. This right-wing lunatic is better off ignored, since to acknowledge him is to endorse his validity. Only a few rednecks listen to him, anyway. It is best not to bring a new contingent to his audience, so the talk show is turned down.
8. The director is flattered that the International Arts Council wants to award the museum with the Museum Hero Award in Paris, but he first offers the acceptance honors to Ima Donor and the Senator from Montana, who happily travel to Paris together to accept the award, and thus saves his job. He got the idea from a very old book on Museum Management (Goode, 1895, 20).
9. PETA is cajoled into a meeting with museum preservationists, who explain that the materials used to create the controversial piece of art is made up of insects and animals which had already died of natural causes. None were killed in order to create this masterpiece. To the contrary, the animals and insects are honored by their bodies having been chosen to remain in perpetuity in this valuable and meaningful work of art. The PETA people question the artist on how the animals and insects died and are reassured that the ladybugs, beetles and cicadas were plucked from the ground only after they had lain their eggs and were dying, while the deer and beaver skins were from animals in the zoo that had died of old age. The PETA people are handed complimentary bottles of wine or soda (their choice) and disburse (Kavanaugh, 2002. p. 9).
10. The prominent artists, who are local, are invited to a Museum Board meeting. They are reassured by the Board members, who planned the exhibition, that it was advertised as a national show, which meant that artists from all states could enter the competition. They were reminded the pieces were juried anonymously, so the judges and jurors had no idea that the winner was from another state, or indeed, even if the artist was female or male. (Kavanaugh, 1990, p. 56).
The Board members also point out that though the artist may never have won a competition in the past, her work has been steadily maturing over the years and it is obvious that her new pieces are remarkably well-done and could be considered the work of a now mature and accomplished artist. The artists are encouraged to enter their own works in the next competition so that they might have an opportunity to win it the following year. They quote Barry Scherr, saying “It is one thing to raise issues of quality or taste; it is another to make unsubstantiated or erroneous statements on those associated with a given project” (Scherr, 2007, para 3).
11. The director is receiving death threats on his home answering machine, so he changes his telephone number and sends the wife and children off to visit the grandparents for a month, until the storm blows over. The director stays with a friend for awhile and alerts the police and FBI, gives them the tape of threats. They agreed that a bodyguard and 24-hour watch over the house was in order. After a few days the police apprehend two teenagers who are “wanna-be” artists, skulking around the house with cans of gasoline and matches and find that they had also been making crank calls, capitalizing on the publicity that the exhibition brought (Lord, 2000).As a result of these crisis-breaking maneuvers, the Director is able to keep his job and the museum becomes famous as an example of an avant-garde institution (Edson, 1996).
List of References
Ackley, Joseph, November 7, 2007, Support Gu-erilla Art, The Dartmough.com Opinion. .
Alexander, Edward P. 1979, Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
Cato, Paisley S., Golden, Julia and McLaren, Suzanne B.. 2003, Museum Wise: Workplace Words Defined. Washington, DC: Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections.
Edson, Gary and Dean, David (eds.), 1996, The Handbook for Museums. London: Routledge.
Goode, George Browne, 1895, The Principles of Museum Administration. New York: Coultas and Volans.
Horn, Adrienne, 2007, Executive Coaching, Museum Management Consultants, Inc. website: http://www.heritageinterp.com/why.htm.
Kavanaugh, Gaynor. History Curatorship. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990.
Kavanaugh, Gaynor. Museum Provision and Professionalism. London: Routledge, 2002.
Lord, Gail Dexter and Barry Lord. The Manual of Museum Management. London: The Stationery Office, 2000.
Scherr, Barry, 2007, Outside Museum Walls, The Dartmouth.com Opinion. .
Veverka, John, 2007, Interpretive Planning & Interpretive Training, World Wide.
There are faxes for this order.
