University art museum case study free essay sample

A son of the president of a university dedicated an Art Museum to a university he was once an alumnus in. The son was a rich investor in a Bank and gave the Art Museum his small high quality collections of art. He worked as the art museum director without payments until he passed away. During his management to the museum, he collection some art pieces from other universities. The museum’s visitors were very limited. After the death of the founder, the university wanted to hire a new manager. While the university was doing its searching for the new manager, there was a graduate from Art History Faculty who took over the management temporarily. Miss Kirkoff was the new manager, she took over everything since the day she started working although she had no official position. Later, they gave her the position and she integrated the university’s work with the museum and she remodeled the building by making classrooms in the museum. We will write a custom essay sample on University art museum case study or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page She also built one of the finest research libraries in the country. She did different exhibitions in the museum and she made members from the university’s art faculty to write a catalogue for each one. The exhibitions were successful. Miss kirkoff also did lectures in which members of the university presented different subjects to audience, the lectures were very successful that they attracted 300-500 The museum also offered seminars and courses and they were one of the most rapidly growing educational features at the university. The museum was very successful that the manager was able to collect funds. After she turned 68, she retired leaving a letter recommending a new professional director and not a director that was an amateur like herself when she first got hired. A committee took over the recruiting process and assigned a previously graduate from the university and had a PhD in Art and History Museum Work. The new manager turned the museum into a lively community oriented one that attracted a lot of people. The new director filled the position for 3 years, after he occupied the job he addressed the museum as a Major Community Resource and that its resources are available for academic community as well as public. He encouraged visits from public schools and that made the museum from being busy but quite into an overly crowded place with school children. The museum’s ratings fell dramatically and that is because students were no more encouraged to go attend classes in the noisy place. In 1983, the museum made an Islamic Exhibition with an opening speech by one of the Arab ambassadors and the speech drifted off to talking about Israel and the American Policies of supporting Israel. The speech was too attacking and violent that made the museum’s reputation drop even more. Later, the senate of the university decided that exhibitions will only be held after the approval of an assigned committee. The director started calling the university names as they wanted to make art only for rich people. On a meeting the senate of the university held, the dean and other high positions in the university agreed that hiring this director was not the best idea of all. On the other hand, an economist who was present at the meeting said that the problem is not the director but the policy itself. He stated that making the museum available for the community was a right policy although how he applied it was wrong. That is how the debate and argument started between the members of the meeting because that is when the Art History Faculty Dean refused to let the museum be an open community resource. The museum did not have the financial capability of serving the public plus the uniqueness of the museum faded by letting it open for the community. The chairman of the mathematics department suggested that the museum should only be for graduates and PhD students only and not for the public. Another chairman said that the university should start by putting its mission statement, direction, and objectives for the museum in order for any director to succeed in his position. Finally, the chairman recommended that the university should put a set of rules, objectives, and goals, that whoever should occupy the director’s position should follow the rules and seek to reach the goals. Link: The main problem was not with the director personally but with his management. So, the university museum shall first begin by putting the organizational goal that will represent the end point to which the organizational efforts are to be directed. This is indeed the primary responsibility of the top management. In order to set the goals, managers should assess the opportunities and threats in the external environment as well as the amount of change, uncertainty and resources available. Moreover, they should assess the internal strengths and weaknesses. The next step is the strategic intent which is the fit between the external environment and the internal strengths which includes defining the overall mission, the official goals, the operational goals and strategies to accomplish the overall mission. According to Porter’s competitive strategies, we believe that they should adopt the differentiation strategy in which they attempt to distinguish themselves from other museums since they are more of integrated with the academic community and have a teaching institution. However, this strategy is costly since it requires the museum to be always unique with its paintings and collections. While according to Miles and Snow strategy typology we think that they should develop the defender strategy since they have to focus more on stability and retrenchment. They should focus more on the internal efficiency. Finally, the manager should evaluate the effectiveness of the museum through the goal approach which evaluates its efforts in accordance to how well does it reaches its goals by assessing the performance of the museum. Moreover, using the integrated effectiveness model, the most suitable one for them is the internal process emphasis that reflects the values of internal focus and structural control. The main outcome of this is to maintain their position and set a stable organization. Questions: Purposes of the University Museum are to provide teaching tools for the students and scholars in the university. By collecting and preserving art, it can be used as art students ’labs’ to further enhance their education. It could house lectures and exhibitions by university students. It can also be open for other non- art students who are interested in broadening their education. The museums customers should be from the university community including the undergraduates, the students who are not going to be art majors or art historians, engineering students, architecture students, liberal art students,. Also, the students making Ph. D since it will help them in their programs through trainings. According to the structure of the museum, it’s obvious that there was centralization since the new director made it a community resource meaning that it’s open not only for the academic community but also for the public without asking the existing employees about their opinion, this made the students unenthusiastic, the attendance of the classes and seminars held fell sharply . Maybe the new director was qualified however, the absence of the mission statement, directions, objectives, and rules made him fail. Any other director would fail if not told what are his basic objectives.