In lighter news, I know it’s not very big of me, but when I read stuff like this, I just want them to fail, fail, fail.
The Globe has a guest op-ed on the New Corporate MFA. The author, president of the security union at the museum, has a bone to pick, but he’s right. But beyond the matter of CEO celebrity culture that Malcom Rogers represents and his nickle-and-diming management approach, there’s something broader at stake: the MFA is the cultural institution equivalent of a corporate raider.
Raiders, it should be reminded, look for companies rich in assets but low in profits. They leverage a buyout by promising to tap those assets and decrease a firm’s liabilities by paring back labor costs. In the long run this may not be best for the firm, but in the short run, it sends money to shareholders that was in effect held "hostage" by longterm spending and by the contract between management and labor.
On one hand, the situation of the MFA is different, since I’m sure that Malcolm Rogers is sincere in his attempt to build the assets of the museum, by increasing its collection and expanding the building. On the other hand, he is financing this expansion by cashing in, time and again, on the cultural capital the museum has built up. Its status as Boston’s most prestigious museum won’t disappear anytime soon, but it has taken a hit from the gimmicky stunts it’s pulling and from its foregoing any active curation of what shows in the museum. If the city’s philanthropic elite begin to choose other cultural institutions as worthier causes, the MFA loses out. They’re taking a gamble that building a mass base of popularity is more important, and in the medium run they may be right. But in the long run, the masses, too, may want to bask in the reflected glow of brighter cultural illumination.
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