Inside the Vision: A Live Conversation

[MUSIC PLAYING] There are stories behind every work of art. Some unfold on canvas. Others are carved into stone, etched into wood, or stitched into fabric. And some exist in the spaces where art meets history, where past and present collide in unexpected ways. Art is always evolving. Sometimes it's on the move. In other times, the walls are. But through every transformation, one thing remains constant-- the Toledo Museum of Arts commitment to excellence. Many have asked, why change something that's already great? The answer lies in the very nature of art and innovation. Growth isn't about replacing greatness, but ensuring it endures. Change isn't just inevitable. It's essential to securing our place as a gem in the art world. Welcome to Building on Brilliant's TMA Story. Today's episode is a special one. Instead of our usual studio format, I'm bringing you a conversation recorded live at the museum. This episode offers a rare opportunity to hear directly from the people helping shape the future of the Toledo Museum of Art. Museum director and CEO Dr. Adam Levine believes transformation shouldn't happen behind closed doors. Throughout this major re-installation project, the museum has remained committed to keeping both staff and community informed and engaged through all staff meetings, public town halls, programs, and conversations like the one year about to hear. This particular event was created for the Libby Circle, a dedicated group of supporters whose generosity helps sustain and strengthen the museum's future. Before we jump into the conversation, I'd like to introduce you to TMA's Chief Development Officer, Emily Croke, who shares more about her role and the importance of the Libby Circle. - I actually stumbled upon the museum in a bit of an interesting way, which is I worked for a nonprofit consulting firm for many years and TMA was one of my clients. - So I came on board as an interim director over development. And after not so long, I knew this was the place that I wanted to be and spend my time and so last July, I came on board full time and to have been here ever since, so I'm just shy of a year right now. - Wow, it's already almost been a year. - Time flies. - But we had you for a while as a consultant first, and so that's why it feels like it's been a bit more. - Yes, I got to test drive the whole, which is probably the best thing anyone could ask for. - Yeah, most people don't get the chance to do that. - Nope, I got to dip my toes in, and then I was like, okay, well, we'll stay for a bit. - From the Tseledo Museum of Art, I'm Dr. Jennifer McCary, host of Building on Brilliant. - TMA Story. This is episode six, which is a bonus episode titled, In the Room, A Peak Into the Libby Circle. All right, you curious listeners. Before we dive into this live conversation, I wanted Emily to help set the stage. Since many of you weren't in the room for the recent Libby Circle brunch, I asked her to explain what the Libby Circle is all about. Here's Emily. - The Libby Circle is one of my favorite groups that we have. It is our affinity group and society that recognizes those who have left planned gifts to the institution. So bequests, life insurance policies, there's all kinds of vehicles for people to give gift and a part of their estate and a planned gift. And the Libby Circles, how we honor and recognize and celebrate those individuals. We do so by kind of bringing them in behind the scenes to some of the work that's happening at TMA. So these individuals are committed at a level that exceeds kind of our everyday donor. They have decided to include us in one of the most important things in their lives, right? How you leave your estate and who you leave it to is one of the most important decisions many people make. And when people include us, we want to give them the honor and respect of including them while they are still living. So that's what the Libby Circle allows us to do. As you'll hear throughout this episode, the re-installation happening at TMA is an ambitious undertaking. Projects of this scale require vision, collaboration, and significant support behind the scenes. With that in mind, I asked Emily why philanthropic support plays such an essential role in making this transformation possible. So oftentimes the answer is simple, is that it doesn't happen without philanthropic support. So it takes committed individuals at literally every level to get this off the ground. And what you'll hear me and my team say often is that if the gift is meaningful to you, then it's meaningful to us. And I truly literally mean that in every sense of the word. If it is a dollar or multi-million dollars, it's important. And it's helping to get this project where it needs to be. You've already talked in your podcast about how important the project is. So I don't need to reiterate it, but it is important for people to know that without philanthropic support, this project literally doesn't happen. So it's our donors that make this come to life. Now, some of you may be wondering how community members can support the museum, even if they aren't major donors. I asked Emily to share her thoughts on the many ways people can participate in sustaining TMA's mission. Here's what she had to say. One of the best ways is really just to continue coming to the museum, supporting the museum, attending programs, certainly giving philanthropically, if and when you can, becoming a member of the museum is one of the most important and incredible ways individuals can support us. But what we need more than anything right now is ambassadors, people who are out there talking about the project, talking about the good work that we're doing, talking about the family center and the glass, the villain, and all of those incredible things happening that exist in the galleries, but also around them, right? There's more to us than just the art on the walls. And I think it's important for people to know what else we have happening here. So yes, we would certainly love philanthropic support, but I would also love for people to be out in the community talking about us, visiting us whenever you can, and certainly like becoming a member if it's something that you can do. A membership is still important even during the gallery closures, right? Absolutely, it's more important, right? Because it's an individual being able to show us, we still support you. We're excited for the museum to reopen. We're excited for what's coming. So we are going to purchase a membership to just, again, show our support in that way. So yes, I'm excited about all of, you know, we have got incredible member benefits. It's going to be even more exciting when the museum reopens and people can come and wander the galleries. But for right now, a membership is truly a sign of commitment and support and loyalty. Right. And just reminding folks, the museum will never actually close. They can still come to our family center. They can take classes. They can go over to the glass pavilion. We have our sculpture garden. Someone recently reminded me like, talk about library and archives. There's so much that you can do will still have class demonstrations. There's still going to be gap artists. Like, there's still stuff happening. Yes. And like some of the most exciting stuff, right? That people just don't have insight into every day. So I think it's-- we've been doing a really good job at hopefully telling people about those things. And now, yes, come, please. Like, we're still here and we still want to see you. And it's a great chance to highlight some of the other aspects of our mission and our work that maybe people don't see as much. Before wrapping up our conversation, I wanted to know what has been most inspiring to Emily throughout this process of donor and community engagement. This is the easiest answer because almost every donor who has given to the campaign so far has done what we would call like they've stretched. They've like, they've gone just one or two steps beyond what makes them comfortable as a donor. Our ask has never been that you're handing over all of your money and saying like, hey, have a nice day. Our ask has always been stretch a little bit beyond what you think you're capable of. And just be considerate and thoughtful about what a gift like that might look like. And so every donor who has contributed so far has gone just one step further than we would expect. Again, it's not about necessarily the multimillion dollar gifts. It's about all of the gifts we've seen this incredible range. And for some people, stretching from $10 to $15 is a really big deal. And I have been thrilled to see people support us in that way because they're excited and I'm excited. And that's what makes this project special is everyone's just going one step further. All right, keepers of our story. If you're truly going to tell others about the transformation underway at TMA, it only feels right to give you a few behind the scenes moments. In this live conversation, director and CEO, Dr. Adam Levine is joined by Deputy Director Andrea Gardner and architect, Michael Moulson, to discuss what visitors can expect, how the reinstallation is taking shape, and the thinking guiding this transformation. You may notice that the audio sounds a little different than normal, but this was too important not to share. Let's listen in. I'm wondering, they're incredible. So now we are going to enter into the fireside chat portion of our program. As you all know, Adam really needs no introduction, but I should just say one thing because it's Adam. So I'll spare you all the full bio, but I just do need to say he is truly the driving force behind his project. He's championed the vision. He's ensuring that it has moved from idea to reality. And so he is the perfect person to lead us in this next portion of the program. And then I will be up again one last time when this is finished. So take it away. >> Thank you, Emily. So when we do want to go through the summertime, for you all to ask questions, if you would like, I do want to ask a reminder. It's for the last thing that Andrea said, which is accessibility makes things better for everyone. And we called out specific ways that you saw it. And there was a record in gallery 27 that also showed some works on good bird display, and you'll notice that the case also had a decent underneath it. So if you're in a wheelchair, you can get close, so you can look. So is that that level of detail? I also want to point out that things like-- and this is something which is very top of our minds, we look to help these numbers answer that. The material that you put into a ceiling really matters. A small gallery putting in at a cruise control ceiling cost $250,000. So it is very easy to say, please make this as accessible as possible. But we're mind you all that if Susan Collins not set that with you yet, she's coming. [LAUGHTER] If you want, the Accessible Museum. This is more opportunity. So with that, a few questions for both. I get up, this is what I do. So a few questions. So you're going to ask maybe the inter-everse, rather than Michael, the same approach we'll come to you. But Andrea, you just go through all the working methods as a different year. Those are the inputs, right? People saw the outputs, but really put an exclamation point on it. And what is going to be different here than the 220 museums is that you are the staff listener. [INAUDIBLE] And the actual display. Yeah, so we can display what's going to be different. First of all, that chronological approach. So typically what you see is you might see chronology within geography. So you might go to your American display and see American art to display within chronology. Like we typically have here. This is what you remember. And you go to your TNR and you see that in chronology. But to see it integrated where you're going to go to classic order, and you're going to see your ancient Mediterranean art. But then in proximity, you're going to see the ancient Chinese art as well. So typically, you wouldn't see that. Typically, the Asian art is all together regardless of what time period it's from. And it's in the Asian art gallery. So that's in the one-defront here. Another is going to be the full integration of media. So this is very unusual. So usually, there's some integration of media. You'll see sculptures and paintings together. You might even see some decorative arts together in galleries. But we're also going to integrate all the works on paper together, so no special works on paper galleries. And we're also integrating all the glass now. So the glass is also coming into the glass of the billion. But candidate gallery will also have a mini chronology of glass. As you all know, we're so rich in glass that we have more than enough that we can also re-integrate chronology and show in a miniature version in candidate as well. That's really exciting. So I think those are a couple of things that really people differentiate from every other organization, all 200 plus that we saw. And look to do this. You would find very few of your photo work, but it requires the right architectural design partner. And you heard one of the things that differentiated my hopeless history of working here. Another thing that differentiated my hopeless, that John Stanley, who was on the search committee, actually, was the CEO of the theme of the time in the gallery building was built in a work of my look. And now the short note is, first out, he's just as nice. Sort of like the couple of days later. He was rewarded to be done. He was actually really helps up the architect, who decided they're not all this way. Understands our history, which is actually what Michael studied in the first instance. We're going to the architectural right now. Because you're not just designing around objects, you actually have 100-symphobics, make sense where to tell this story. So Michael, what are the things you're to distinguish about your project? And we'll just work on these things. You work fine design on a number of different projects. You have six three bridge rebuilds. And let us do some projects, some more projects. You do residential projects. You bring all those best practices together. So across your area of practice, what makes this project special and difficult? Well, we do work on the wide range of projects. And I think that it's one of the things that Lawson helps us that we don't think about programs, different types of buildings, and isolation. You really think about them in their larger relation to culture, to history, to their contemporary moment. I think one of the things that really does differentiate what TMA is trying to do, is doing this project, is the idea that you are taking a more comprehensive approach to the collection. And that it starts with the collection. There are many museums that are reestablishing themselves or building new buildings and new wings. And those are phenomenal things. But they always start-- this is a weird thing for an artifact to say, but they start with the architecture, as opposed to starting with your collection. And here we started with the collection. That is actually the foundation of everything that's going on here. And so our work from the very beginning was not to start thinking about how a room would look or how we would configure our room architecturally. It was to work with the larger curatorial team to understand what kinds of relationships between the collection you could make, and then let the architecture be responsive to that. And one of the things that I think is also unique to our practice is we're working three-dimensional physical models. You were looking at renderings. In our office, we had this huge-- I mean, it's taking a lot of space. [LAUGHTER] Model of TMA with all of the objects in it. And as the concentration team has come to the office, Andrew has been there and has been there a number of times, we're literally moving the pieces almost like a chess game in that architecture to make sure that those relationships are really strong. And you can get down, you can look, and see how those connections are being made in physical space. And I think that part of the working method is also a bit very beneficial to the type of project that you're trying to do. And it makes me very confident that those relationships are really going to be super strong. So the only thing I don't like about the model is the walls are just up there. That's a good wall. The wall out there. Me too to believe that it would be better. [LAUGHTER] It's not that easy, but it turns out. But actually, one of the other things that I alluded to and sort of my kind of as an Audi accessibility came up a couple times, when I also went under score. And this is not unique. But I think it's probably differentiated and a lot of fun for you. One of the things that Frank Erie was known for in addition to architecture was furniture design. And actually, like, architects love making furniture. And the Altente and my bi-blood solidities are just building the casework design in the casework, designing some furniture. So talk a little bit about how that fits in to creating a fully integrated experience. That reflects and relates to the architecture. But as also, as you can see, really responding to the objects and to the artwork. You know, a complete work of design is one that really touches every single aspect of a project and that works at multiple scales. So in the beginning, we're thinking about the group as a whole, and how the laborings are working, how the lighting is working, what the scale is like. But then that really gets to do the scale of the casework. And thinking about how the cases, the platforms, the walls, can create an integrated system. So it's not a hat hazard. No matter what configuration you put those different elements in, it feels like it makes sense. It feels like it was intentional. But to do that, we've had to again go back to the collection to make sure that the sizes and the scales of the casework that we're designing is responsive to the size and scale of the different collection elements, whether it's painting, whether it's a very small object, whether it's a really large, very heavy class object. We've been back and forth to make sure that system is working for the collection for the installers for the curators. Fermentry, I think, is really interesting because people don't just move through the museum on a conveyor belt. They're walking through. And there are any number of moments where you want to stop and pause and do that on your own, or maybe with a friend or one of your children to talk about the piece that you're seeing or what you've just seen. That's a part of the experience of the museum as well. In that sense, it's not-- we don't think of furniture design as something that we go out and buy. We bring in and we plop it down. But that is, again, integrating into the entire aesthetic of the museum, but also the-- structure of your experience so that when you're sitting there, you're actually sitting on something that feels as intentional as the case work that is supporting the art. And that has been very exciting because I think it really is going to feel like you're in a space that has been thought through from biggest picture to the smallest typeface of the most. It's been so much fun to come into these conversations and so obviously my job is to design the furniture to design the furniture. It's not actually build the furniture so the next question is to you Andrea. So Andrea, we're very close together and there are parts of our shared experience that absolutely would be in sort of an area like here in the middle of the fubo dream. So there was a moment where we were bidding on African artwork that was in one of those renderings and the desert of Saudi Arabia was serendium off. You can't think of us on GrandDom. From a start, he's an experience to being on the film bidding on a hot wind and a shoulder mask. Right? So another one of those people dream experience was, you know, for injuries, she'd be there and a service of crew make you all that we will leave no stone on the terms. Andrea, tell them how are exciting excursion to the west to figure out how we might procure her set furniture once it's designed. So yes, we will leave no stone on the chair. And we have many adventures together. One of our latest adventures was in the pursuit of piecework. So we are obviously pursuing trying to get gifts in kind as much as we can. And there are furniture makers upon us in Ohio. And so we were pursuing to see if what these furniture makers might have the capacity to build casework for us. And so we went on an excursion to Shiawana to give it the homage. Which was rather exciting. The homage were not the homage furniture makers were not what I thought they would be. I don't know if any of you have been on it. The tours of the homage furniture making facilities. They're quite advanced. They aren't using electricity because they can use generators. They just can't be on the grid. And so it was fascinating. And so we'll see what happens that still a live conversation that we're pursuing. Because yeah, piecework, I mean, when you're placing all of the piecework in all of the galleries simultaneously, you can imagine that that adds up rather quickly as the design is beautiful. But that sheet. So yeah, that is another desert of Stavya Radio to Shiawana and Shiawana. The whole of the way. As you can imagine furniture makers use a hundred quality wood. The quality would be through the room. If we could make it happen in the factory tax that works outside incredible operations. So we need notes on an intern to try and sort of deliver this project. It's the hottest invest that we can for the community and for the museum world. Since that end, just to line down here with one last question, you can't do it. What do you hope that people say about this project about Transformation 2010 to 7 different solutions? When it's done, I really hope that people walk in. And they feel a sense of awe at what they're seeing. They walk in and they immediately hunt for some of their old favorites and they find them. And they are dazzled by what they see in practice at each time. So they see them with fresh new eyes, but they also find new favorites. Because there's a lot of new artwork that we've been acquiring as well. That will be the oldest part of this process. And that they feel a sense of comfort that it's still their museum. But it's their museum re-envisioned and that much better that they remember it. So that's all I can think of as I hope. Is that the Michael, the same question to you? That I'm going to follow up with one final sort of corner learning question before we open it up. Well, I think Andrew is exactly that idea that somebody would walk in and feel that it is very core the TMA and what the TMA has been through its full history. But also that it honors much of what I think of the East Britain motion, which is a museum. That has the ability to continue to evolve. Time doesn't stand still. Our continues to be made. Those interrelationships continue to be developed and that the museum should really be able to sustain physically and support the collection. To tell that ongoing story, to also know that when the museum opens, that's a point in time. And it will continue to evolve as it will evolve. We have no pressure since that right. We are doing the right thing to be seen with this moment. And that in the future there will be other interrelations and directors and community curators that will evolve the museum for themselves. So Michael, the last thing I want to just acknowledge in front of this group is another thing that is different. Actually enough as a project as I understand it is that your work came with the director. This is not a self-dued sale, but you know, we work with the director of ethnic comps. Ask you to support the project. That's right. That's right. I should be sitting out there. And you said, yes, Michael is a very generous supporter of this project. In addition to the work that he has put again, he is putting in this time, he's putting in his health, but he's also putting in his treasure. And is this the first time you're doing that? This is the first time you can maybe. [Applause] Because, you know, one, as I mentioned at the beginning, I have a personal history with this museum that has. I've been connected to this museum over a series of really consequential moments in my life. And so I feel very personally to the museum, but I also think that what the museum is trying to do is, as I mentioned, at the very leading edge, of what role museums can and should be. And here, it will play to the future. And as an architect, that's an extraordinary thing to be a part of. And I was very excited to be able to be a part of that with that gift, because for me, it is cementing this idea of what the TMA is personally, but also, I think, having the world is all a thrilling remarkable place. Okay, well, I think on that note, because I'm looking at the time, and I'm your question, just for you. I'm going to have to back over to Emily. Please give him one round of applause. But Amber gets right here. [Applause] Well, there you have it. Thanks for joining us for this special bonus episode. Next week, we'll return to our usual format. In the meantime, feel free to revisit your favorite episodes from Season 1 and continue to build on brilliance with us. This season of building on brilliance, TMA Story, has been your exclusive guide to the re-installation project. Fill with insights from those who brought this vision to life. Stay tuned for in-depth conversations, behind-the-scenes stories, and an inside look at how the Toledo Museum of Art is evolving for the future. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Building on Brilliance, TMA Story, on your favorite podcast platform. Leave a review and share it with others who love art, culture, and storytelling. We'd love to hear from you. Join the conversation and stay connected with us on social media. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, be well.