How Museums Use—and Misuse—Corporate Consultants as a Bandaid to Address Diversity and Solve Their Biggest Problems
Missteps and voided promises are bringing new scrutiny to for-profit strategies in the nonprofit field.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.
The task should have been simple for an executive search firm like m/Oppenheim Associates. The Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields was paying the company to help bring a new director through its doors. But the job listing on the search firm’s website created an explosive controversy when it expressly requested that applicants help attract not only a more diverse crowd, but also maintain its “traditional, core, white art audience.”