Open Letter to the Newark Museum

Executive Director/President
The Newark Museum
49 Washington Street
Newark, New Jersey 07102-3176

Re: Building Audiences -- in Various Buildings

Dear Sir/Madam:

In sorting thru papers the other day, among which was a renewal form for my Newark Museum membership (which I took care of by phone), it occurred to me that the Museum suffers from the truth of the expression "Out of sight, out of mind." It also suffers from the perception that it is an elite and somewhat alien enclave in this particular city. It is too white for many of the residents of the city that surrounds it, and its neighborhood is perceived as too black for many suburbanites to feel comfortable visiting.

Maybe we can solve both these problems, and two others -- the Museum is physically too small and out of the way for most people -- without a huge building program.

I work in Gateway Center, in which the Museum had a gift shop I passed by regularly and from which I bought various things. That retail space is still unoccupied. So are other retail spaces in the Gateway complex.

The skyways that link six buildings to Newark Penn Station and each other are busy highways for pedestrians who could be reminded daily of the Museum's existence, hours, collections, and relevance but are not now so reminded.

(a) Perhaps a deal could be worked out in which the management of Gateway Center, the Legal Center, the Hilton Hotel, and Penn Station would permit the Museum to use as little galleries, on a temporary basis, various vacant retail spaces for free or for a nominal payment, to (i) give the complex a fully-occupied look and (ii) showcase retail space that is now ignored by passersby.

The Museum could establish mini-museums in each vacant retail space, taking a page from the Whitney Museum's book. You may recall that for several years the Whitney had outposts in Downtown Manhattan and the Equitable Building in Midtown. If the Newark Museum is like most museums, it has a great many more pieces in its collections than space in which to display them. (The Whitney's website says that only 1% of its collection is on display at any given time!) With additional space, more items could come out of storage areas into public view, either as mini-exhibitions complete in each vacant retail space or as a multi-site exhibition in several vacant retail spaces that people could move between.

Each retail space would contain selected original works and/or reproduction posters, plus desktop computers or electronic kiosks by which photos and commentary on many of the Museum's other works (currently displayed and in storage) could be shown.

Each retail space would display a sign in the window to say that this is a temporary installation and the space is available for lease (with contact information), but until it is leased, the management company is offering a little culture to pedestrians as a public service. A display just inside the door could hold management-company brochures under a sign like "You came into this space. Others do too. Maybe this would be a good place for your business."

Vacant retail spaces are not the only venues in which the Museum could set up mini-exhibitions, of either original works or reproductions. Arts High is an obvious venue, as are other schools, public and private, at all levels, from primary grades thru graduate school. Almost all of them have exhibition space and security guards. The less-secure spaces could be lent reproductions. There are also community centers (the NCC center, for instance), nursing homes, and of course the branch libraries of the Newark Public Library.

The Museum could cover Newark with art like an octopus camouflaging itself against a coral reef, selecting objects that appeal to the specific location and are thus most likely to strike an evocative chord with the people who see them. Naturally, in this computer age, a kiosk tied to photos of the Museum's ENTIRE COLLECTION could be placed in a very small space in a school or public library, as part of an intranet, if the Museum's Internet website could not handle such mass. The Newark Museum could have a hundred sites, 200, covering Newark like dandelions in a lawn. Why own things you can't show? Indeed, if the Museum wants to sell its lesser works, they could go to these extramural mini-museums with dignified signs that say "The Museum will entertain any reasonable offer to purchase anything displayed here."

Plainly one major concern must be insurance for any original works loaned. Naturally, if posters instead of originals are placed, insurance becomes less a concern, and the insurance that each building's management or owner (e.g., the Newark Public Schools or Public Library or New Community Corporation) already carries might in many cases suffice. If not, we happen to have a very large insurance company here that is very public-spirited. I suspect Prudential (and any other insurance company based in Newark) might find a lot of insurance coverage in its public-relations budget for exhibitions that carry prominent mention of its role (e.g., "This exhibition is protected by The Prudential. Shouldn't you be?") -- and contact information. It costs an insurance company very little to set up an insurance arrangement if it doesn't have to pay out because the items covered are protected by security guards.

(b) Moreover, the Museum could, perhaps in conjunction with other arts organizations (Aljira comes to mind), display posters of its best pieces in the Gateway/Legal Center skyways, along with information on Museum hours and collections, plus order forms for posters, reproductions, etc. This might take the form of a time-limited exhibition, akin to the art shows in Greenwich Village in which sidewalks and fences are lined with paintings for a few days annually, or the form of a permanent display in which many individual posters are changed periodically to keep the exhibition fresh.

Such displays would enable the Museum to reach the thousands of pedestrians who walk thru the skyways and past unoccupied retail spaces, at once to remind them of the existence and mission of the Museum and to show them the joy that a little art in their lives each day can bring.

Expanding the Museum's home structures would be enormously expensive, and still wouldn't solve the problem of "out of sight, out of mind" nor the (mistaken) perception of the Museum as dangerous to go to -- unless the Museum completely relocated to, say, a capacious new building in the area between Newark Penn Station/Gateway Center and the planned hockey arena, which I imagine would be fiscally impossible at this time.

With dispersed exhibitions such as I propose, Gateway, Legal Center, Hilton security people, and Amtrak and Newark police, Museum volunteers, and the simple presence of large numbers of ordinary working people passing by the existing retail spaces and past skyway exhibitions would make visitors feel safe. If they then see subtle promotional materials designed to counter the impression that visitors to the Museum's home base are at high risk of being robbed or murdered, the comfort they feel in the Gateway context may carry over to their feelings about the Museum's home base.

Realize that thousands of commuters who work in Newark but live in the suburbs are literally afraid to leave the confines of the Gateway complex to go anywhere else in Newark. So are some of the guests of the Hilton, though others may not have such preconceptions.

The Hilton Hotel affords the Museum a real prospect of new visitors, because businesspeople with 'time to kill' may have no idea of what to do in Newark, nor how close the Museum is to where they find themselves. Visitors from places like Paris, London, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, and Beijing may have no idea that the Newark Museum is worth visiting, but might instead assume that a city of Newark's modest size could not have a world-class museum, so the Newark Museum might be thought as little worth visiting as would be a "Podunk Museum". Bringing vivid examples of the excellence of the Museum's collections, and filling the skyways and retail areas near the Hilton with art would make quite an impression -- of the Museum, of Newark -- on visitors who represent diverse audiences, nationalities -- and wealthy transnational corporations.

Moreover, it seems to me that the Museum should focus its acquisition strategy on building collections that appeal to present and future audiences. That is, the Newark Museum may have one of the Nation's best Tibetan collections, but how many Tibetans are there in this community, eager to contribute to the Museum's sustenance? If instead the Museum concentrated on building the Nation's very finest collection of contemporary African, Caribbean, Hispanic, and Portuguese-Brazilian art, it would tie in much better to existing communities that might actually visit the Museum. The key term here is contemporary. Today's young audiences are interested in today's culture, and it is contemporary art that can draw them into the overall artistic heritage first of the geographic or cultural area that most interests them, then of all the world.

The Museum might indeed, with other Newark arts organizations, create an annual "Newark Newart Exposition", that offers exhibition space for today's artists to compete for modest prizes in a mile of artworks strung along skyways, park walkways, and sidewalks (say, from Penn Station thru all the interconnected skyways and building lobbies, thru the Seton Hall Law School, on thru Military Park, up Broad Street to the Museum, along Washington Park, across to NJPAC's plaza, and ending in a great open-air exhibition at Bears/Eagles Riverfront Stadium, staged in daytime, in good weather (e.g., mid- to late-September). If a Riverwalk is developed from Penn Station to NJPAC, the path of the Exposition could contain a return route. Moreover, the Loop bus could, for the duration of the Newart Expo, stop at key points to rescue weary artlovers.

If the Museum hooks a young audience, it doesn't have to wait decades for them to become benefactors. They will make Museum functions a part of their recreational routine. And if they find themselves even thinking of attending more than two or three events per year, they might decide that taking a membership makes good sense. Once they have a membership card, they become eager to make the best use of it. They will attend more events because they're free! And they may even drag their friends along to events and "treat" them because they've already saved on their own admission.

I'm almost 60, and have belonged to the Museum for only one of the more than four years I have resided in Newark. What if I had joined when I was 23 and renewed every year since, and brought my friends to numerous Museum activities -- and some fraction of them took memberships and renewed regularly too?

Grab people young to build your future. The way to grab them young is (1) go where they are, rather than expect them to come to you -- they have other things on their minds; and (2) grab their interest by finding the best that is new in the cultures that most interest them.

You have to reach out to reel in the young, because they're spoiled. They expect everything to appear before them wherever they happen to be: TV in their room, a computer that brings all kinds of information into their home or classroom or school library, cellphones and text messaging that ring on their hip. You have to go where they are before they will go where you are.

Please think about this.

Cordially, L. Craig Schoonmaker, Newarker