New leadership for the Taubman
The museum’s most prominent benefactors are stepping up to guide the institution.
Donors contemplating a gift to the Taubman Museum of Art in recent years couldn’t be faulted for wondering whether they might as well fling their money from the downtown attraction’s convoluted roof.
October 9, 2012 - 8:02 AM
Maybe it can be explained, but how will they compensate for getting rid of ticket sales. Is reception/wedding/catering business booming there? I can’t imagine. The Gift Shop have a hot ticket I don’t know about?
Personally, sure it’s awesome the museum is free (could have reduced), but is allowing this free concept sustainable in the long run? How will they compensate the sales? Handouts doesn’t sound sustainable. What is the new plan for the museum? How will things change other than new leadership? How was $180,000 being given to a director in the first place? Reintroducing ticket prices is going to go over like a lead balloon. Lots of questions to be answered. Godspeed Taubman, the community needs you.
Wow. You STILL don’t get it. The Taubman influence was the genesis of the failed vision, the failed building design, the failed connection to the interest of the larger populace. So now the Taubmans want to come back, in an effort via their sycophants on the RT, to harangue Roanoke with – ‘If it fails now, it’s YOUR fault!…’
It has failed all along. It always WILL fail. Why? Because the elitist artsy lemmings think Roanoke is wrong, that Roanoke should be Boston, or DC, or NYC, or any other city that Roanoke is most definitely NOT. It will NEVER service the artistic desires of the populace, especially as long as the interpretation of ‘local interest’ is having gullible people loan somebody their ladders to stack up in a pile and then calling that ‘regionally inspired art’.
Jenny Taubman can see all the art she needs in NYC where she lives. Her husband provided her that lifestyle. She should have considered that before she demanded her… excuse me, his given last name be applied to such a museum, when she demanded it be such a garish monstrosity.
Hey, how are those maintenance bills going? Higher than projected, right?
Solution? Wrecking ball.
I can’t express just how insulting it is for Ms Taubman, and ESPECIALLY the Roanoke Times, to call out the general public as though it is OUR fault if the Titanic of an art museum sinks.
NO! It is YOUR fault! The blame lies with those who fostered this self aggrandizing concept from the beginning. The Roanoke Times was at the center of it, because of the personal relationships with the Taubmans, and the delusions generated by the associations with them.
Wrecking ball.
I salute them all for stepping up and I hope the renewed interest and activity will be the spark the Museum needs to become the integral part of our city it can be and a drawing card for tourists too. Looking forward to seeing a better presence and more patronage. Go Taubman! And thanks to the stellar folks willing to take this on.
Crooked road may have knocked that out of the park.
“Monday’s announcement cannot be an excuse for the majority of Roanokers to shed their responsibility to support the museum with their attendance and membership contributions.”
Unbelievable. Simply Unbelievable.
I hope the new board will provide the direction the museum desperately needs. Is it a giant weekend amatuer art classroom? A children’s play theater (doesn’t that compete with Mill Mountain Theater)? An obscure documentary film theater (don’t we already have Shadowbox Cinema)? A B&W photography show (don’t we already have the Link Museum?) A storage warehouse for the same tiny American art collection we’ve been tired of for decades? I don’t think the Taubman Museum has a clear idea of what it should be, or what people want to see. I hope the new management will bring in more art worth seeing–real paintings and sculpture exhibits, not tacky purses, tattoos, quilts, paper rolls, cardboard, ladders, etc. It would be great to have art in our city so beautiful that I would want to see it again and again, plan events around it and bring guests from out of town to see it too. My fingers are crossed!
I have a responsibility to support the museum? Really?
Uh, no.
I have a responsibility to put food on the table for my family, shelter them, and provide for them the best I can.
I sure as hell have no responsibility for something that many predicted would fail while it was in the planning stages.
They lost our support when they changed the name. Bon chance!!