Let the Weeping Commence!

 About 15 years ago, Bill was working at a ‘museum.’ I put the quote marks there because it was not a real museum, but was a vanity project on the part of a wealthy guy (I’ll call him George) who used to live in the town. Half of it was devoted to Western art and the other half was display cases filled mostly with looted artifacts. The guy would wander around picking up arrowheads and things, bring them back and stick them in a display case or, even worse, he would glue them to boards in the shapes of tipis and other things and stick these in frames. Some of the displays were of things he had purchased. In almost all cases, any sort of context or explanations were absent. In the case of the arrowheads, by just digging around for them and grabbing them, he ruined any possible context anyway. 

When the guy died, the wealthy owner of a local company (the largest employer in the area) bought it and hired a local woman to run it, although she wasn’t there full time. She was insecure and defensive—a lovely woman outside her job, but difficult to work with.  Bill became the manager. Some months later, I came up with an idea. I asked to attend the next board meeting, where I presented my CV, and a proposal. I told them that if they hired me on a part-time basis at a certain salary, I would do a series of things, like apply for grants, try to develop projects that would modernize the place a bit, etc. They agreed.

It turned out to be a mixed bag. When I would find a grant and suggest we apply, the director would shoot it down, saying things like, ‘It’s too competitive. We’d never get it.’ OK, then. We were more successful at getting the go-ahead to do a life story project with 10 local artists. That turned out to be an excellent experience for us and the artists. It benefited the ‘museum,’ too.

The director wanted to try to have weekend gatherings of artists like in the old days when the ‘museum’ was first created. She tried to interest artists in coming, some of them from afar, but was never successful. This really bothered her and she would grumble about how things weren’t like they used to be. I finally had to tell her that it made sense that no one wanted to come. In the past, George would pay their expenses and often buy paintings, so it was worth their while. But the way she wanted to do it, there was nothing in it for them—no possibility of work being purchased and they would have to pay their own way. 

At one point, I was walking through the displays, pointing out where there were problems, most of which we couldn’t actually do much about.  I was adamant, however, that we needed some explanatory material to go with the beadwork which contained the swastika image. It was just hanging there without any explanation that this is an ancient symbol and when the bags were made, the Nazis had not yet appropriated it. She seemed surprised, but agreed. She wouldn’t let me do it, though. She wanted to do it herself, being the director and all. It never got done.

Bill and I shared an office and of course we talked at home. At one point, we talked about doing an artist-of-the-month exhibition in the gift shop. Artists would bring in work and it would hang there for the month. There would be publicity. It seemed like a good idea for a few reasons. For one thing, the gift shop was the only part of the museum that one could browse without paying an entry fee, so publicity for a new exhibit each month might draw people in. Even if they didn’t pay to go into the museum, they might buy a piece of art or something else in the gift shop. The ‘museum’ got 30% of the sale price of any art/craft work that was displayed in the shop and the same would be true for these exhibitions. It would be good for the artists and the ‘museum.’ We brought the idea to the director and she barked some questions about it, which we were able to answer easily and convincingly, because she finally said we could do it. It was a success all around.

When I had my first evaluation, it was just me and the director in a small room upstairs. Things went along fine until she got to the point where she was expressing her displeasure at the fact that, as she put it, ‘You and Bill come up with all this stuff and then start it behind my back. I am the director and I should be consulted first.’ I told her I disagreed with that assessment and to please provide me with an example of when we had gone behind her back and implemented something, only to tell her after the fact. She was quiet for what seemed like a long time. Then she said, ‘The artist-of-the-month. You planned it all out and started the ball rolling without consulting me.’ ‘That’s not true,’ I said. I went on, ‘It’s normal for us to bounce ideas around with each other. We talk about everything, so of course we would talk about this place, whether in the office or at home. But we have never started something without coming to you first. We have the idea, but we don’t do anything about it until and unless you approve. That was the case with the monthly art exhibitions, too.’  She said that was fair enough. 

Then things got weird. She began to weep. I sat there, frozen in my chair, wondering what I should do. Through her tears she said that I was always so kind to her and how much she appreciated that. I felt terrible, because I was thinking that if she knew what I was thinking much of the time, she might be crying for other reasons! I don’t remember what I said to her, but I was really glad when she stopped crying and we could leave the room!

After Bill and I both left, we would sometimes go back to visit the people who worked there. She often cried then, too, because things had gotten bad when the owner died. There was some question about what would happen and the woman who did the finances was caught doing some shady stuff and had to leave town. It was a mess. And they kept on raising their entry fee, wondering why attendance kept on going down. Eventually, we moved away and the director was replaced by someone else. We would get a check every now and then for photo projects (Bill) and textile work (me) we still had for sale in the gift shop until that was all gone. Once a friend said she'd been to the place with another friend who got a free pass and it was still as bad as I use to describe it, so I guess not much changed.

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