You can do your part by raising your voice with your state legislators in support of MANY’s advocacy agenda.  The agenda is part of a larger advocacy white paper, Living on the Knife’s Edge: The Status of New York State’s Museums in 2012.

For information about how your museum or heritage organization can advocate, see this FAQ.

NYS Senate Cultural Affairs, Tourism, Parks and Recreation Committee
Betty Little, Chair

Eric Adams (D- Kings)Greg Ball (R-Dutchess, Putnam, Westchester)
John J. Bonacic  (R-Delaware, Orange, Sullivan, Ulster)
Thomas K. Duane  (D-New York)
Patrick M. Gallivan  (R-Erie, Livingston, Ontario, Wyoming)
Joseph A. Griffo  (R-Lewis, Oneida, St. Lawrence)
Mark Grisanti  (R-Erie, Niagara)
Timothy M. Kennedy  (D – Erie)
Jeffrey D. Klein  (D-Bronx, Westchester)
Carl L. Marcellino  (R-Nassau, Suffolk)
Patty Ritchie  (R-Jefferson, Oswego, St. Lawrence)
Jose M. Serrano  (D-Bronx, New York)
David J. Valesky  (D- Cayuga, Madison, Oneida, Onondaga)

NYS Assembly Tourism, Parks, Arts and Sports Development
Margaret Markey, Chair

Ken Blankenbush (R-Jefferson, Lewis, Oswego, St. Lawrence)
John Ceretto (R-Niagara)
Christopher Friend (R-Chemung, Schuyler, Tioga)
Dennis Gabryszak (D-Erie)
Aileen Gunther (D-Orange, Sullivan)
Sean Hanna (R-Livingston, Monroe, Ontario)
Guillermo Linares (D-New York)
John McEneny (D-Albany)
Steven McLaughlin (R-Albany, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer)
Dean Murray (R-Suffolk)
Daniel O’Donnell (D-New York)
Dan Quart (R-New York)  
Bob Reilly (D-Albany,Saratoga)
Naomi Rivera (D-Bronx)
Samuel Roberts (D-Onondaga)
Linda Rosenthal (D-New York)
Teresa Sayward (R-Essex, Hamilton, Saratoga, Warren)
Matthew Titone (D-Richmond)

Preserving the Infrastructure:

• Rebuild the New York State Council on the Arts.  In 1960, New York State was the FIRST in the nation to establish state arts agency.  NYSCA must be sustained as a strong independent entity, and its Museum Program as the primary funder of museums.  The FY2012 executive budget holds NYSCA’s local assistance funding to the FY2011 level of $31.6 million – while this is welcome news, it remains an astounding 58% below its highest point just two decades ago. This decline is unprecedented among state agency local assistance funding.
• Restore the legislative line item of $450,000 to the New York Council for the Humanities.  This funding would provide a renewed, publicized offer of small grants ($3,000-$10,000) to the state’s best public humanities programs in communities from Long Island’s Five Towns to Niagara Falls.  Council funding goes to a wide range of museums and heritage organizations of all sizes and does not overlook smaller institutions in upstate cities and rural areas.
• The Zoos, Botanical Gardens and Aquariums Program received $9 million in FY2011 and has not been reduced in the FY2012 executive budget.   These dollars are a good investment, because they allow organizations with ‘living collections’ to leverage public money against private gifts.  The catalyst of public money is what drives the engine for many museums across New York State.
• Help ensure that SED has a deeper understanding of the museum community it regulates, the challenges it faces, and that it acknowledges the innovation, imagination and success of museum education programs across the state, recognizing that the educational contributions of museums are equal to those of libraries, archives and public broadcasting.

Collaboration and Partnership:

• Create a seat at the economic development table for museums and cultural institutions because they are a driving economic force.  Help museums partner with business executives to find innovative solutions to the challenges of the new economy.
• Uniform highway signage is desperately needed by museums and heritage organizations – indeed all cultural institutions – particularly in smaller communities and rural areas.  Let’s help audiences find these great places!
• Urge government to see museums and heritage organizations like the small businesses that they are.  Yes, they are nonprofits providing communities with important educational and cultural services, but they are also employers facing skyrocketing health care and energy costs.
• Create a fund for cash-strapped museums and historical organizations to buy time for restructuring, thus forestalling the pressure to turn collections into cash.
• Build easy-to-access information about museums and their education programs into State Education Department curriculum standards so that teachers are aware of the programs available to them and are encouraged to use museum resources in classroom instruction.

Innovation and Oversight:

• Appoint a Regent who is a museum professional. Doing so would acknowledge the complexity of museum governance and give an equal voice to a community the Regents charter.
• Help the museum community plan for growth. The Regents grant 20 to 30 provisional charters annually to new museums, but with diminishing resources available and long-established organizations struggling to maintain funding and audience, no organization should enter the field without substantial endowment, making it questionable whether more museums results in better cultural heritage stewardship or education.
• Create a committee that will work with the Attorney General’s office, the bankruptcy courts, Board of Regents, and the Museum Association of New York to address the complex questions surrounding deaccessioning, providing a voice for extraordinary collections imperiled by fiscal crisis, bankruptcy or dissolution.

Unwind and Dine with MANY after the networking reception Monday night (April 23) at the Midtown Tap & Tearoom, a favorite local bistro around the corner from Opalka Gallery.

Join us as we wind down a busy conference day with friends, new and old alike, over a relaxed dinner buffet of pan-European cuisine.  First drink is on us!

Pre-Registration is required, cost for dinner is $45.  All proceeds benefit the Museum Association of New York.

We’re happy to introduce our Consolidation Steering Committee:

John Haworth, MANY President
Director George Gustav Heye Center
Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

Mark Mortenson, MANY Treasurer
President & CEO
Buffalo Museum of Science

Pamela E. Green, MANY
Executive Director
Weeksville Heritage Center

Steven Kern, MANY
Director
Everson Museum of Art

Beth E. Levinthal, MANY
Executive Director
Hofstra University Museum

Anne Ackerson, MANY Director

Michele Phillips, Museumwise Chair
Conservator of Paper Objects & Photographic Materials
NYS Bureau of Historic Sites, Peebles Island

Lenora Henson, Museumwise Treasurer
Curator
Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural NHS

Rob Cassetti, Museumwise
Senior Director, Creative Services & Marketing
Corning Museum of Glass

Dana Krueger, Museumwise
Registrar
Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College

Sally Treanor, Museumwise
Museum Planning Consultant

Catherine Gilbert, Museumwise Executive Director

To ensure our ability to harmoniously provide quality services and programming throughout the course of this year’s consolidation process, the Committee’s first agenda item was to begin refinement of a consolidation timeline.

We remain committed to engaging you in this process in an open and responsive way, inviting input and taking inspiration from our members and stakeholders alike. To this end, we will be posting an FAQ to begin addressing your queries and concerns throughout this process. We intend for this to be a fluid document, which will flex and grow in response to your feedback.

Likewise, we look forward to our 2012 Museums in Conversation conference as our next opportunity to speak directly with you about our progress in crafting the best service model for the New York State museum community – we do hope to see you in April!

In the meantime, feel free to drop us a note, Catherine director@museumwise.org and Anne info@manyonline.org.

MANY President John Haworth has asked us to stretch our goal by $500 to bring the total to $4000. Can we do it? With YOUR help we can and we will!! Please consider a first-time or additional gift to the 2011 Annual Appeal and make your contribution online via this link:

Our thanks to this great group of donors:

Charles Bauder
Michael Botwinick
Melissa Chiu
Nadezda Davis
Louis Grachos
Pamela Green
John Haworth
Joy C. Houle
Carle Kopecky
R. Beth Klopott
Suzanne LeBlanc
Beth E. Levinthal
Mark Mortenson
Linda Norris
Steve Rooney
Bart Roselli
Patricia P. Sands
Amy Schwartz
Gwen Spicer
Ivan Steen
Diana S. Waite
Nick Westbrook

Big Springs Historical Society, Caledonia
Geneva Historical Society
Neuberger Museum of Art
Oneida Community Mansion House
Slate Valley Museum, Granville
The Jewish Museum, NYC

Bags Unlimited, Rochester
Edison Price Lighting, NYC
West Lake Conservators, Skaneateles

Want to add your name to this illustrious list? You still can! Just visit here to make your donation.

Since 1962 MANY has given voice to the needs of and issues facing our state’s dynamic museum community — whether that be through our surveys, our publications, our advocacy work, our annual conference with Museumwise, or our networks of shared expertise.  We’re here to respond to your questions, provide access to quality information, and offer mutual support.

And we’re committed to doing this every day.  We’re committed to making all of us stars.

We’re reaching for the stars with our Annual Appeal goal to meet this year — $4,000.   And we’re more than one-quarter of the way there right now.  With your help, the 2011 Annual Appeal will allow MANY to jump into several initiatives right away:  data gathering for the 2012-13 salary and benefits survey, consolidation planning with Museumwise, and advocacy for museums and the agencies that serve us in what will be another difficult funding year.

This white paper is the culmination of three facilitated Focus on Value conversations held during the Museum Association of New York and Museumwise 2011 New York State Museums in Conversation Conference. These conversations were meant to highlight the critical importance of measuring the public impact of museums and heritage organizations and articulating it to a broad spectrum of stakeholders from the boardroom to the living room. About 80 conference attendees participated in one or more of the sessions – for many, the ‘value proposition’ was a familiar topic; for many others, it was a new and perhaps daunting way of thinking about their institutions.

Download
The Challenge of “Value”
Engaging Communities in Why Museums Exist
(Acrobat/Adobe PDF format, 2.9MB
Click here to get Adobe Reader)

How Do We (Re)Vision our Museums?

Museums are institutions steeped in tradition but surrounded by constant change.  Not everyone knows what a museum is anymore, but some certainly think that whatever it is, it’s not for them.

After the 2011 conference conversation around “How Do We Prove the Value of Museums?” it seems that the next logical step in the discussion must explore how museums rethink their roles and functions to make or enhance value in the 21^st century.  We’ll be talking about ideas for and examples of transformation, asking and answering questions like “why should we redefine ourselves and what will happen if we don’t?” and taking on Nina Simon’s challenge “should museums be generous and greedy?”

We are happy to announce of 2012 Museums in Conversation Keynoter is Ron Chew!

Ron is principal of Chew Communications and the former executive director of Seattle’s Wing Luke Asian Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. Known as an innovator using cutting-edge presentation with a locally oriented-emphasis, Chew helped redefine museums by melding cultural identity, civic participation, and museum programs into a new tool in the fight for social justice.

Ron will provide the conference’s opening keynote on Monday, April 23 as well as a closing presentation on Tuesday, April 24.

The 2012 Conference will also feature a luncheon address on Monday, April 23 from American Association of Museums President, Ford Bell!

Ford W. Bell began his tenure as president of the American Association of Museums in June 2007. He brings to AAM a lifelong passion for museums, and a clear understanding of the important role which museums play as places of lifelong learning and inspiration.

AAM was founded in 1906 to represent the entire museum field. Today AAM has some 20,000 members, including 3,000 museums, zoos, aquariums and public gardens. Its stated mission is “to enhance the value of museums to their communities through leadership, advocacy, and service.” The largest museum organization in the world, AAM serves the field by promoting standards and best practices; gathering and sharing knowledge; and providing advocacy on issues of concern to the museum community.

The conference conversation schedule is available!  And it’s being updated frequently.

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Good in Theory Findings & Action
Good in Theory Report
Good in Theory Resources List
Good in Theory Key Phrases

The Findings

YNPN tested five popular recommendations for increasing talent retention and strengthening emerging leadership in the nonprofit sector via a national survey and focus groups:

• Nonprofits should offer more competitive compensation.
• Nonprofits should invest in building “bench strength”
• Nonprofits should engage in inclusive succession planning
• Nonprofits should prioritize diversity
• Nonprofits should move away from traditional organizational structures and chief executive roles

The final report, Good in Theory, Problems in Practice lays out the key findings informed by this research.