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Terence Loose

For eight months, the Orange County Museum of Art searched for a director to lead the museum through the big changes ahead. Finally, in August, Todd DeShields Smith took over as the new CEO and director.

Key to the museum’s choice was surely the fact that during his last post, six years as director of the Tampa Museum of Art, he oversaw the fundraising and building of a $32 million internationally award-winning museum, which he brought in on time and under budget. The museum has been a major catalyst to the economic and cultural rejuvenation of downtown Tampa and has boasted record attendance and membership numbers.

All that can’t be bad news for OCMA’s ambitious, yet somewhat stalled, plans for a move to, and a new building in, the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, especially at a time when fundraising for the arts, as well as technological distractions, has sent the museum world scrambling to stay relevant in the eyes of the general public.

So we sat down with Smith, pictured here with Untitled, a Doug Wheeler Plexiglas piece, and asked him how he came to the arts, and to OCMA, and why art museums still matter.

Were you interested in art from a young age?
Actually, I grew up more interested in music and played in the middle and high school bands. But I realized I didn’t have a great talent for that and when I was in college I sat in on a class about the history of western art. I got hooked and from then on I kept taking art history classes; coming at it more as a historian than an artist.

How did you get your start in museums?
After college I spent a couple years as a curator in a small museum, then went to graduate school. Since then I’ve been curator at two more institutions and director at five.
At the Orange County Museum of Art I’m serving as CEO and director, so I don’t
have any curatorial responsibilities, but I do oversee all aspects of the curatorial program, the education program, the fundraising program, and the facilities. What I love about institutions this size is the opportunity to have a hand in all the aspects of the museum.


What makes a great museum?
I think a great art museum is very clear in what the mission is and very clear in how they deliver on that. Some are defined by great collections that their curatorial and education staff can use to tell stories of specific moments in time or the grand march of history. Some institutions are encyclopedic in their approach to collect art from all over the world and all periods. There are others, like us, that are more specific. We are a museum of modern and contemporary art that has a very strong focus in Southern California art. That has let us build a very strong collection.

How do museums stay relevant in our frenetic age?
For us, because we are so direct in what we show and why we show it, our members and visitors have a strong sense of why we matter. There’s a big discussion in our industry of relevance and how do we make what we do relevant to a larger community while still holding very high standards for research and care of our collections.

Does art matter in our technological world?
Definitely. If you look at some of the great inventions in the last 15 years, art is a huge factor. The entire ethos of Apple is based on design and high-quality design principles that many of us take for granted because it seems so natural and intuitive. But in fact there’s so much design thinking that goes into an iPad or an iPhone that we sometimes need to step back to see why art matters.

Speaking of technology, does the fact that we can now virtually experience anything and everything through smartphones and tablets pose a challenge?
How technology is changing how the wider public appreciates the visual world has been a challenge for many museums. People can appreciate art now much more readily than you could 20 years ago thanks to the devices. So you might think you don’t need to attend a museum exhibition because you can see it on your tablet. Well, we’re here to suggest just the opposite. That there is a very special connection that somebody makes to an original work of art when standing in front of it, experiencing it, whether with friends or alone. That in-person experience informs the meaning of the work as much as the image itself.

Does technology change people’s knowledge about the works?
Yes. There’s an exciting moment for our museum to think differently about what our relationship is to our visitor, because they have much more information about the images than ever before. So they can be a much more informed audience, but they can be a much more demanding audience as well. That’s because they don’t necessarily have to come to the museum to see the image. So because of that, we have to ask ourselves: “What do we offer them that the solitary iPad experience can’t offer?” And I think it’s that opportunity to be around great examples from all areas of the world, of individuals who have created work that’s about making sense of the world around them. So this is really a defining moment for institutions like ours, helping people appreciate that artists can make us think differently about the world around us.

Does all the digital “noise” make it easier or more difficult to reach people?
I actually think there’s a third path and that is that the museum can be a place of refuge. It can be a place to unwind, to perform a digital detox. A place to put aside the day-to-day concerns of the world and your life and the constant need to be connected via whatever messaging system you use. It’s a good place to turn that off for 45 minutes and remind yourself of what makes us all human and that’s the ability to create and to think and to experience joy. The museum is a great place to do that because there’s no start or end time, you can come whenever you want, and you can make the experience your own.

What about the suggestion to incorporate technology into the museum space?
For a long time there was a push to get technology into the galleries, but now we’re seeing a little pushback to that. People want the space to be pure, because there aren’t a lot of places in the world where we can still hold onto something that’s not about the minute-to-minute. Very few things in the art world have to be appreciated the minute they go up on the wall.  You can take time to get to know the piece, review it, revisit it.

OCMA has plans to move to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Why?
There are two main reasons. One is to build a new building that’s more conducive to 21st-century artistic forms and to reach industry standards for our building. And the second is to use the greater visibility to continue our outreach into all parts of the county, since we do want to be seen as the art museum of the whole county. By being more centrally located, it will allow us to expand our audience and serve more people, which we think plays to our mission. It also allows us strong partnership opportunities with our peer institutions that are there.

You opened Tampa Museum of Art on time and under budget. Why is that important?
We are very much known for the quality of our exhibitions and the quality of our education programs, but we should be equally well-known for our fiscal responsibility. I think any time you ask people to support you, whether it’s a $5 gift or a $5 million gift, you need to be very conscientious about how you use that money. We need to let our supporters know that artistically we’re at the top of our game and fiscally we’re at the top of our game too.

How do we compete with L.A., New York, and other important centers for the arts?
If we are able to host exhibitions, organize exhibitions, write catalogs, have education programs that are, in the critics’ and the public’s minds, equal to what’s happening in larger arts centers around the world, we are succeeding. And I believe we are. In fact, I wouldn’t just limit it to the U.S., because the art world has become so globalized that while L.A. and New York matter significantly, so do Shanghai, Beijing, Berlin, and other places around the world. So there’s a growing opportunity for museums, especially ones of our size, to make our presence known. Our audiences think more globally, so we do, too.

One example is the transition of OCMA’s California Biennial into the museum’s California Pacific Triennial. Why did it expand?
One of the mainstays of our education program has always been the California Biennial, which has been part of our exhibition program for decades. It’s allowed us to really
take stock of what happening in California and that program was morphed in the California Pacific Triennial. So instead of an exhibition every two years, it happens every three years
and it takes as a starting point not just California, but the entire Pacific Rim. It’s art
that’s being produced not only in the West Coast of the United States but in Latin
America and throughout Asia. So it really shifts our focus westward in a way that acknowledges the growth of those art markets. It also allows us to stay relevant to our community, since Orange County has changed dramatically over the last decade or two.

Who does the program feature?
We strive to capture emerging artists who are very early in their careers and present them to the public. And from a collecting point of view, it allows us to find work from these exhibitions that forms our collections, so 30 years on we can look back to these events and see artists who are now well-established and be able to say we supported them from their beginnings.

Is it difficult to fundraise in the post-recession world? Have the donations stayed low?
For the arts it has come back in the last two years or so. Not to pre-recession levels just yet, but it’s closing in. But more importantly, it’s allowed us to do a reset on how we look at fundraising. There’s so much more technology that allows us to fundraise differently. It helps on some levels, and frees us up to do more of the one-on-one meetings that I think are key for fundraising.

Do you find fundraising onerous?
No. I think any time you’re very passionate about something, as I am with art, your job is to find people who share your passion and give them opportunities to make their mark on the institution through their gifts.

What attracted you to taking the post at OCMA?
The opportunity to work on a new building project is attractive. I went to Tampa for that specific reason. To work in an institution that has a national and international reputation for its exhibition program was a great draw. And honestly, to live on the West Coast. 

:: ocma.net