What were the greatest challenges for the museum during the Pandemic?
There were many challenges that the Museum faced during the pandemic. When we first closed our doors on March 13, 2020, we quickly had to pivot all of our efforts and funnel our work into a digital format, creating new programming and offerings for our community online. Over the entire 15 months of closure, we really missed the connection with our community onsite and had to find new, creative ways to meet the needs of our community digitally.
Like many cultural institutions, the financial impact on the closure was also great. To date, OMCA has lost around $2.8 million in earned revenue during which time it remained closed to the public. The Museum anticipates an additional approximately $2.3 million in total revenue losses in the upcoming fiscal year. That said, we have undertaken a full organizational redesign so that we’re able to continue to offer programming and exhibitions and to engage with our community, even with a smaller and leaner budget.
What measures did you take to overcome those challenges?
In terms of reaching our community virtually, our staff created OMCA at Home, offering digital programming, behind the scenes footage and interviews with staff, activities for families and schools, and more. The closure allowed us to reimagine what we could offer our audiences digitally and even inspired us to think of ways to reach new audiences that we may not have before.
Financially, unfortunately, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in layoffs at the Museum in April of 2021. Staffing-related costs make up more than 70% of OMCA’s overall expenses. As mentioned above, the financial imperative for the Museum in this restructure is to reduce its annual operating budget from approximately $16.6 million to $14 million.
Rather than just face this as an economic imperative, we are striving to approach this moment as an opportunity to advance as a more equitable, anti-racist organization. In January of 2021, we launched an inclusive redesign process involving all staff’s input. This redesign helped to shape the outcome of OMCA’s staffing plan. We hope to foster innovation and collaboration and operate more efficiently and with the agility necessary to weather this moment and position the Museum to thrive in the future.
The OMCA has always fostered a sense of community in Oakland, what are some of the measures to build a sense of community that you’d like to highlight?
We are excited to have recently completed a major renovation that was developed with the community in mind. The exterior of the Museum facing 12th Street and Lake Merritt was a barrier to our neighboring community. We’ve literally broken down the wall to create three new openings connecting OMCA and the lake, which will soon be open for visitors to enter into our newly renovated garden.
Our programming and exhibitions are always created with community impact in mind. In recent years, we’ve begun measuring our social impact, gathering data as a community engagement strategy to create greater social cohesion -- or building greater trust, understanding, and connection between people and between communities. We developed specific criteria for our exhibitions and programs to measure whether or not we were fostering a sense of belonging, lifting up untold or under-recognized stories, and creating connections between people.
Has there been a change in how you see OMCA as part of the Oakland community since the Pandemic?
The pandemic has made it even more clear that museums, including OMCA, are essential to the well-being of our communities. It’s important, now more than ever, to create a safe space to gather and be with one another, whether it’s to enjoy our galleries, programs, or gardens. We’ve also considered all of the aspects of what it means to be safe as we welcome back our visitors, grounding safety precautions in a commitment to equity, recognizing the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on communities of color.
Has the Black Lives Matter movement and issues concerning equity and inclusion impacted how the museum moves forward?
Absolutely. In June of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd and the nationwide reckoning of a longstanding racial justice crisis, OMCA staff began engaging in deep internal discussions around the role of race, equity, and inclusion within the museum itself. Staff-led anti-racist design teams participated in an eight-week process to review and recommend institutional priorities with a focus on anti-racism and equity, which were incorporated into the redesign process recommendations and conversations that began in January of 2021.
Over the last year, as we’ve imagined a new future, we’ve undertaken deep reflection to consider what it means to bring anti-racist principles into the core of the institution. Currently, we are working to define and embed new practices and processes into our organization structure. This work is ongoing and we are committed to being transparent about our journey and holding ourselves accountable for this work.
What efforts to bring more people into the museum have been most effective?
Going back to our social impact work, we know that creating exhibitions, programs, and content that resonates with our community is a positive way to invite our visitors in. When our audiences see their stories reflected and feel welcome, we are being most effective. In recent months, it’s also been extremely important to prioritize safety in a variety of ways -- physically creating a safe environment for social distancing, psychologically ensuring our visitors feel welcome, etc. More visitors are excited to return when they know that their safety is top of mind.
What do you see as the biggest challenges for museums going forward?
I believe the greatest challenges for museums going forward is truly to ensure their relevance to and responsiveness within their communities. Museums can be trusted places to foster dialogue, to build understanding and to explore critical topics -- including some topics that are very difficult and require true-telling. Museums need to rise to this occasion and then measure, document, and make the case for their value. Museums have the incredible opportunity to transform as a result of the conditions and circumstances of these last few months, and they need to embrace this moment and not default to “business as usual.”
What is your hope for the future of museums?
My hope for museums is that they become as indispensable to their communities as other institutions and organizations that people feel are critical -- like parks, or libraries, or even sports teams. We see the huge outpouring of community support to retain sports teams in cities, and I’d hope to see that same sense of pride and ownership for museums.
If you could add anything to the museum collection, what would it be?
For OMCA right now, our collecting story is less about adding objects than it is about adding stories. What are the stories we can’t adequately tell right now through our collections? We’re doing a lot of thinking and work to explore how we tell the stories of these last few months -- the pandemic, the national racial justice movement, the political upheaval, and the economic displacement. How do we capture stories that may not be as well known -- especially from marginalized or underrepresented individuals -- and lift those up through artwork and artifacts, along with the voices of community members.
What are some of the upcoming exhibits/events that you are most excited about?
In just a few weeks on August 7, we’ll debut our exhibition Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism, which celebrates the Black community and reimagines a future through a Black cultural lens. This exhibition was originally scheduled to open in October of 2020, so it’s been a long time coming and we can’t wait for our visitors to see it!
Later this fall, we’ll explore the legacy of Edith Heath of Heath Ceramics with Edith Heath: A Life in Clay, opening November 13, 2021. Heath transformed the ceramics industry, creating dinnerware from California clay for “Sunday best” and everyday use. It’s going to be a beautiful and enlightening show.
What is the best part of your job?
The best part of my job is learning and doing something different everyday. Leading a museum of California art, history and natural sciences means that the content we are developing and creating is always changing, always new, and always a discovery for me. My work is also very broad -- from thinking about exhibition content or collections, to raising funds, to working with community partners, to recruiting and hiring new staff. I am constantly inspired and have an amazing opportunity to work with so many different people who share a passion for Oakland, for California, and for the cultural and civic life of our community.
