Hope Alswang faced many challenges when she became director of Rhode Island School of Design’s Museum of Art in September 2005.
Attendance had declined by 20 percent to 73,093 visitors in 2005, from 91,501 visitors in 2001. And a $38 million renovation and expansion project was on the horizon that would require closing at least parts of the museum for some time.
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Alswang had to decide whether to keep the museum open at all, or close for two years so the project could proceed more quickly. She decided to stay open because there was an outcry from the community at the thought of having the museum close, she said.
But it will take a total of four years to renovate the building while it remains open, and individual sections will be closed temporarily for construction. To stay open during the project required organizing a new exhibition schedule almost entirely from scratch.
That meant exhibitions such as the popular “Wunderground: Providence, 1995 to Present” that ran from September to January, had to come together in a matter of months versus the normal time frame of a few years, said Matt Montgomery, museum spokesman.
Nevertheless, last year turned out to be one of the most successful in the museum’s history. Attendance rose by 21 percent, to 88,447, breaking the five-year decline.
Alswang attributes the increase to the museum’s eclectic mix of exhibitions.
“When I came here, what I tried to do was analyze the opportunity to serve a mix of different audiences,” she said. “What I have brought here is a slightly more self-conscious look at that.”
As quickly as the exhibitions had to be put together, Alswang said, she and the museum’s curators tried to craft a season targeting specific audiences, such as the young children and parents drawn to the children’s book exhibition, “From Goodnight Moon to Art Dog: The world of Clement, Edith and Thacher Hurd,” which ran from April to July of last year.
After “Goodnight Moon,” the museum experienced a surge in attendance to its weekend children’s programming, Alswang said. The secret was stirring families’ interest and excitement through the exhibition.
“They get to know us as a good venue for children,” she said. “They trust us. They come back.”
The same scenario applies to other audiences. “Wunderground,” for in-stance, drew a mix of young adult (under 40) visitors to the story of Providence’s underground art scene and the artists’ collective “Fort Thunder,” which was displaced by a shopping center development.
Alswang said exhibitions such as “Wunderground” reflect a time of change and risk-taking in the museum’s history. That trend is driven by ambitious curators, especially Judith Tannenbaum, the museum’s first curator of contemporary art, but also by Alswang.
“I was brought in with a strong mandate from our board of governors to serve a broad and diverse public,” she said.
And because the museum depends so little on admission fees for its $5.4 million budget, Alswang and the staff can concentrate on innovative programming.
Only 5 percent of the museum’s budget comes from admission fees and gift shop sales, she said, whereas most museums rely on that type of income for 30 to 40 percent of their budgets.
The majority (73 percent) of the RISD Museum’s funding comes from the earnings of its endowment funds. The rest comes from grants, gifts, membership fees and RISD.
But that doesn’t mean Alswang isn’t looking for new funding sources. “Our problem is we want to do more,” she said. “If we want to do more, we have to find money. … We’re very aware that we have to look outside the borders of Rhode Island for funding.”
That is one of the reasons increasing attendance is imperative. It is instrumental in attracting national sources of funding, she said.
“We are really committed to getting those numbers up,” she said. “We still have lots of room to grow services.”
