James L. Allen Center, Northwestern University
June 24-29, 2012
In partnership with the Kellogg School of ManagementCenter for Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University
Background
The AAMG motto states that "Great Universities Have Great Museums." For their part, great academic museums and galleries cannot exist without strong, visionary, and articulate leaders. Academic museums, galleries and collections function in a particularly complex ecology subject to internal and external forces that can pull both for and against their success. Preliminary data from a study being undertaken by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation reiterates the fact that the quality of leadership provided by these institutions' directors makes an acute difference between success and failure, institutional and community support or ambivalence. Despite the crucial importance of strong leadership, training opportunities to be an academic museum/gallery director principally occur "on the job," rather than through formal instruction. Recognizing that academic museum and gallery leadership is a distinguished field with particular and growing challenges, the AAMG is pleased to partner with the Kellogg Center for Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University to offer a summer pilot program in field leadership for up to 35 participants. The program -- with significant financial support to Northwestern from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation -- is aimed at providing learning opportunities appropriate for directors, deputy/associate/assistant directors, and director-curators of academic museums and galleries of all sizes, in all collecting fields, and leaders at all career stages. While a portion of the program is related to collections and appropriate to collecting institutions, non-collecting gallery leaders should also find great value in the Seminar and are invited to apply. This certificate program is designed to inspire, stretch, and challenge current field practices. Participants should expect to leave the Seminar with broadened leadership and management perspectives, new paradigms for thinking about the multifaceted roles and intrinsic value of academic museums and galleries, and renewed enthusiasm for their chosen profession.- Jill Hartz, President, AAMG The Seminar's goal is to strengthen the leadership of our nation's academic museums and galleries in light of their special institutional natures and current and ongoing challenges to the field, including the complex governance and advisory board structures under which academic museums function; unresolved legal issues surrounding the preservation versus capitalization of academic collections; and the complexities of successful fundraising and fiscal management within the strictures of parent organizations. The curriculum has been guided by several noted academic museum leaders and will be taught by tenured Kellogg/Northwestern faculty members and selected adjunct faculty members from the field.
Come to Northwestern next summer to:
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Enhance critical leadership skills;
Understand management principles and how successful academic museums and galleries operate;
Understand the importance of vision to the success of academic museums and galleries;
Foster a strong team orientation among museum and gallery administration and staff members;
Build an awareness of change management theories that can be applied to the evolution of museums and galleries;
Nurture the ability to manage multiple stakeholders, including advisory boards, committees, faculty, staff, volunteers, students, alumni, donors, university partners, etc.;
Develop skill sets for creating strategic alliances and for building partnerships within and outside universities/colleges;
Network with colleagues from across the United States;
Share leadership styles and learn new ways to tackle management challenges;
Earn a Leadership Certificate from Kellogg and the AAMG.