George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Breaking From Donor Dependence" @nytimes by ROBIN POGREBIN
ONE doesn’t typically think of drawing visitors to a cultural institution with a sheepshearing festival. But that is part of the strategy of Gore Place, a historic house in Waltham, Mass., that also has a working farm.
The farm has always been a part of Gore Place, the 1806 house and estate of Gov. Christopher Gore that is considered among the most significant Federal Period mansions in New England. Recently the institution has stepped up its for-profit events to include snowshoeing (rentals available at $8 for adults and $5 for children), farm dinners ($80 a person) and an evening “Tick-Tock a Tour” of the mansion’s clock collection ($15).
Such efforts are part of a growing consciousness among cultural institutions that they can no longer depend on donations and must develop revenue-generating activities beyond the cafe and bookstore.
“Museums are thinking of new ways to achieve their mission that earn money,” said Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums, an initiative of the American Alliance of Museums.
“How do you break this cycle of charitable poverty?” Ms. Merritt continued. “How do you make a program self-sustainable, where you’re drawing a connection between people who value it and those willing to pay for it?”
Such projects come with some growing pains, museum experts say, particularly given the historical bias against mixing a cultural mission with business considerations. But at a time when contributions from foundations, corporations and individuals are shrinking — along with government support — such adjustments increasingly seem like a matter of economic survival.
“It requires a mind shift,” Ms. Merritt said. “To stop thinking automatically in terms of underwriting and stop thinking of earning money as somehow being a bad thing and start with the premise that if you’re delivering a program that’s mission-related maybe there’s a way of finding a capitalist way of supporting it.”
There are already such entrepreneurial ventures. This summer, the New Museum plans to open NEW INC, an incubator for art, technology and design in its adjacent building at 231 Bowery in Manhattan. Members selected through a competitive application process (deadline April 1) are to form an interdisciplinary community intended to foster collaboration and innovation. Those chosen will pay a monthly membership fee in exchange for work space, professional development, support services and a series of programs. The fee will go toward the incubator’s operations.
The Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., recently established “The Edge at The Dalí,” a creativity and innovation services program for businesses and nonprofit organizations. The museum developed its curriculum based on Dalí’s art and the psychology and neurology of innovative thinking.
Over the last decade, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has developed a commercial licensing business by marketing its digital image archive to the home furnishing, fashion and hospitality industries. Designers are drawing from the museum’s textile collection for products like tableware, drapes and pillows. “The purpose is to get the artwork and the imagery out there and to see it used in multiple functions,” said Debra LaKind, the museum’s director of business development and strategic partnerships. “It’s also a way of generating revenue.” The Bronx Museum of the Arts now hosts dinners featuring prominent chefs ($250 to $300 a person), runs a wine club that generates as much as $15,000 a year and recently started selling prints of works by some of its featured artists.
The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington charges a licensing fee to collaborators in its SparkLab National Network. SparkLab offers activities at the museum that are focused on invention, such as Science Stations, which explore concepts like radioactivity, and an Under 5 Zone where children can build with blocks or solve puzzles. The proceeds go into the program.
In exchange, the partners receive use of the Smithsonian, SparkLab and Lemelson Center names and logos; a set of start-up activities; two years’ worth of materials, and assistance and consultation services. The program ultimately aims to help its collaborators in the network — like the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum in Reno, Nev. — create activities and programs that are specific to their institutions and geographic areas.
“The idea is to expand it out of the museum internationally to places that seem interested,” said Arthur Molella, director of the Lemelson Center. “They can take our basic material and add a lot of their own content relevant to the idea.”
Organizations like Gore Place feel as if they have no choice but to diversify. “Historic houses have to find ways to make themselves unique in order to survive,” said Susan Robertson, the executive director. “They have to be cultural resources, they have to be community resources, they have to be able to pay their bills, they have to attract visitors — they have to get a buzz going.”
“It’s an exciting challenge,” she added. “Whether we’ll succeed remains to be seen.”
Indeed, it is still unclear whether these experiments ultimately will make nonprofit institutions more independent of donor largess. Gore Place, for example, is in the second year of a three-year plan to pursue new sources of revenue — including farm stands.
“Like any new venture, there are all of the unknowns,” Ms. Robertson said. “You don’t know if the geese are going to come in and strip your pea fields in half an hour or you don’t know that you’re going to have an influx of rabbits and they’re going to eat up all your squash.”
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