Another New Beginning

The appointment of Betsy Gotbaum as executive director marks yet another "new beginning" in The New-York Historical Society's long and troubled history. At first glance, one cannot help but wonder about the Society's chances for success. Its endowment has dwindled, its donor constituency is narrow, and it has run deficits in twenty of the past twenty-five years. Since 1987 alone, the Society's cumulative operating deficits (including depreciation) have totaled more than $15 million. Ironically, it is the very severity of the Society's situation that has made it possible to try again. The truly dire circumstances, combined with public recog­nition of the enormous value of the Society's unique collections, have resulted in the first direct and substantial support from the state and city government since well before the turn of the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, however, the $12.6 million appropriation made by the New York State and City governments neither solves the Society's financial problems nor provides the means for the Society to address many of its other programmatic and organizational difficulties. So what is next for the Society? The latter part of this chapter outlines a series of options the Society could consider as it plans for the future. First, however, to frame the various choices the Society's leaders face, it is useful to begin by recapitulating the fundamental threads, themes, and problems that emerge from this study of the Society's 190-year history.

The major issues before the Society fall into three broad categories. First, there are the burdens incumbent on any organization responsible for valuable old col­lections and an aging physical plant. These can be separated into questions of collections management, preservation and conservation, and building mainte­nance. Second, there are issues associated with the Society's obligation to provide public service. Finally, there are institutional and governance issues, including those arising from the Society's effort to manage and balance the needs of both a mu­seum and a library.

Collections Management

The oldest problem for Society management stems from the undisciplined accu­mulation of materials during the Society's first 150 years. The steady inflow of tens of thousands of books, boxes of manuscripts, paintings, prints, and ephemera was literally impossible for the Society's tiny staff to keep up with. In addition, during the first seventy-five years of its existence, the Society was on its own, stor­ing and categorizing the items as well as it could, without any established, pro­fessionalized standards to guide it. Library and museum norms simply did not exist. By the time professionalized standards for cataloging and sharing collections became widely recognized and used, the Society already faced a hundred-year cataloging backlog.

Today, the backlog remains extremely large. Even for the parts of the col­lection that have been cataloged, there is no single unified record of the materi­als, making it difficult for library staff to access the Society's collections with efficiency. Although the exact size of the Society's catalog backlog is uncertain, there is no doubt that to catalog the Society's entire collection would take a very long time, probably decades.

Still, the importance of cataloging the collections cannot be overstated. If an item is not in the catalog, it cannot be found efficiently. If it cannot be found, it might as well not be in the collection. There have been several initiatives to cata­log, assess, or rehouse the Society's various library and museum collections over the years, and in each case, there have been numerous "discoveries" of valuable items. In 1985, for example, a gilded chair made for Louis XVI and given to Marie Antoinette was discovered in a Society warehouse. Without a comprehensive cat­alog, there are bound to remain many such items in this state of "nonexistence." Developing a single up-to-date inventory of the collections will remain a long-range project requiring perpetual investment for the foreseeable future.

Another consequence of the historical lack of a collections management pol­icy is that the Society now owns a collection without clear geographical, chrono­logical, or thematic boundaries. Redefining those boundaries after materials are received is extremely difficult. Reasonable people will inevitably disagree on the proper delineation of the boundaries. Debate on whether the Society's updated mission statement ought to include colonial materials not directly related to the New York region, such as the Philadelphia printing of the Declaration of Inde­pendence, offers a case in point. Furthermore, even if such decisions could be made, deaccessioning collections has legal ramifications. If a donor stipulated that an item was to be held by the Society in perpetuity, breaking that restriction re­quires legal action by the state attorney general and the courts—another expen­sive and time-consuming process.

Conservation and Preservation

At the core of the Society's mission is its responsibility for the millions of items under its care. As one would expect, the Society's most valuable holdings are very old and therefore extremely fragile. Letters and manuscripts were written on paper that will inevitably turn to dust; books were bound with materials and glue that deteriorate; and pictures were created with paints that fade, on canvases that disinte­grate. Thus even if elaborate preservation technologies had been available from the Society's earliest days and the Society had actively managed a conservation pro­gram, a constant and never-ending portion of the Society's resources would still have to be directed toward the physical maintenance of the collections.

Unfortunately, for much of its history, the Society did little to protect its valu­able holdings from the effects of time. The rapid growth of the collections, the lack of resources, and the limited preservation tools available in the early years are all factors that contributed to this neglect. Consequently, a substantial quantity of paintings, manuscripts, drawings, and books are in need of immediate attention. The creation of the painting and paper conservation labs during the late 1980s was an important step forward in addressing this problem, and much progress has been made, but like cataloging, conservation and preservation are unremitting obligations.

Physical Plant

Because of the rapid growth of the collections, the Society has always struggled with the limitations of its physical facilities. In its earliest days, the Society moved several times. After 1904, when it built the central building of the structure it now occupies, the Society dealt with its continuing collections growth by adding the north and south wings. But collections growth did not stop with the 1938 expan­sion of the building. When it once again found itself short of space, the Society contracted for outside storage. The first record of payments for outside storage appeared in 1969, and for seventeen years such expenditures remained modest. Unfortunately, there was a hidden cost to the inexpensive storage facilities: they did not provide a suitable environment for protection of the collections. The 1988 public controversy about the Society's substandard care of its collections and the subsequent attorney general's investigation were instigated by reports of the conditions in the Society's outside storage facilities. The Society responded to the controversy by moving the collections into a first-rate environment, but at sub­stantial cost. In 1993, the cost of the lease for outside storage was $500,000, nearly 10 percent of the Society's operating budget.

Inadequate storage space is not the only facilities-related problem the Soci­ety faces. The building is nearly one hundred years old, and the fixed costs asso­ciated with maintaining it are extremely high. Much of the facility is cavernous, with high ceilings that make it extremely expensive to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. In addition, the building is not well designed to provide clear sight lines for guards in the exhibition galleries or to control flow in the library. To safeguard against theft requires substantial security personnel. Finally, and per­haps most important, capital maintenance of the structure, like preservation and conservation of the collections, is an expensive and unceasing job. Unfortu­nately, for many years, the Society did not spend enough for the regular mainte­nance of its physical plant. The bill for that deferred maintenance has come due, and it is large. Of the recent $12 million government appropriation, $10 mil­lion was for capital improvements, and even that sum has proved insufficient to address all of the structure's problems. Because of the age and condition of the building, substantial funds will be needed annually for plant maintenance and rehabilitation.

Relationship with the Public Sector

In its infancy, the Society was dependent on the public sector for support. It was the state that saved the Society during its first brush with bankruptcy in 1824. In addition, the city made available parcels of land (which the Society did not accept) in the 1860s when the Society had outgrown its Second Avenue home. But after the establishment of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library, the Society did not petition the public sector for general operating support again until the late 1980s.1 During that long period, patterns and attitudes were established—both at the Society and in the government—that made it extremely difficult for the Society to appeal successfully for public funds.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Society's emphasis on supporting genealogical organizations and their research drew criticism from people who wanted to see it play a greater public service role. In 1917, the May Van Rensselaer episode brought considerable public attention to the Society's failings in this area. Although some progress was made during the tenure of Alexander Wall, the $4.5 million Thompson bequest in 1934 gave the Society such freedom and independence that for nearly forty years, it was accountable to no one. During this period, the Society's investment proceeds accounted for more than 90 percent of its total annual income. Because it was receiving no government support, Society lead­ership could congratulate itself when it provided even the most minimal level of service to the public. This attitude affected officials on both sides: the Society's officers, who were proud that their institution accepted no public assistance, and city officials and the public, who came to perceive the Society as elitist and arro­gant. When the situation changed in the early 1970s and the Society could no longer live solely off its endowment income, the Society faced a very long climb to rehabilitate its reputation sufficiently to merit public attention. In fact, it was never able to make that climb; government and state support became available only because the Society was near death.

Another major factor that has adversely affected the Society's potential for re­ceiving regular government operating support has been the changing economic and political climate. As the economic environment has grown increasingly diffi­cult for nonprofit institutions generally, more of them have appealed to the city for help. The process for receiving annual support from the city's Department of Cultural Affairs depends on being included in the Cultural Institutions Group. The CIG is composed of thirty-two cultural institutions located in all five bor­oughs of the city. Because these thirty-two institutions divide up what is a greatly constrained fiscal pie, it is in their interests to prevent new members from being admitted into the group. Furthermore, because of historical patterns, institutions focused on minority issues and institutions in the outer boroughs are underrepresented in the present distribution of members. Together, these factors illustrate why it is very difficult for an institution with an elitist and exclusive reputation, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to qualify for new support today.

Community Outreach

One way for the Society to overcome its stuffy and elitist image would be to pro­vide services to its surrounding community. There is no question that public offi­cials regard such outreach as a prerequisite for any kind of continuing support. What is fascinating is how difficult it has been for the Society to overcome its rep­utation for arrogance. The generally accepted characterization of the Society as an institution that has made no effort to attract and engage the public with its ex­hibitions and programs is simply not true. One can argue that its efforts have been unsuccessful, but one cannot assert that no such efforts have been made. Most recently, the Jackie Robinson exhibit, the "Why History?" program, and the edu­cational initiative with O'Shea Junior High are but a few examples of the Soci­ety's attempts to open its doors and thereby improve its public image.

The reason for highlighting this distinction between impressions and reality is to show that the process of changing the Society's image has not been, and will not be, easy. A successful public program, whether it is an exhibit, a lecture series, or an educational initiative, is expensive to mount. More important, for such a program to have any chance of fundamentally altering the Society's reputation, it must be sustained. The Society's history is dotted with successful exhibits and programs that were hailed in press articles in which the Society was congratulated for finally opening its doors and shedding its stodgy image. Sadly, when contro­versy reappears, the positive characterizations disappear, and the Society is rela­beled with its traditional and more notorious reputation.

It is clear that an attempt to overcome this bias will require substantial in­vestments over a long period of time, with no guarantee of success. Past efforts have failed. The widely held perception that the Society has not attempted to en­gage the public is based on the assumption that the problem is one of supply— that the Society has simply not attempted to make available the kinds of programs the public wants. What has not been acknowledged, however, is that the prob­lem may really be more one of demand. Perhaps the Society's collections, no mat­ter how intelligently they are displayed, simply cannot compete with the myriad of options available to tourists and New Yorkers looking for cultural enrichment or other entertainment. After all, how popular is history? If the Society's failings are more a question of demand, substantial investments to improve the Society's reputation carry a very high degree of risk.

Multiple Purposes

Ever since the 1850s, when the first major art collections were donated to the N-YHS, it has been difficult for the Society to achieve a balance between the com­peting demands of the museum and the library. In the Society's early years, it was a battle for display and storage space. These battles continue even as the Society's building is being renovated. Additional complexity has been added in recent years as the Society has moved to step up its educational and public programming.

In any era, such tensions would be difficult to manage, but it seems that they are even more so today. In the early 1940s, for example, when the costs of run­ning the Society were more modest, Alexander Wall explained that the Society's library could not exist without the museum. He implied that the museum was a kind of cash cow that would pay for the library. He said, "The scholarship part of the historical society's work would be likely to have a bare cupboard if not coupled with a popular museum." Today, there are no cash cows. Museums also struggle to raise the money needed to balance their budgets. No museum would want a portion of the money generated by its exhibits and collections to be siphoned off to finance another programmatic activity (in this case a library) that is unable to sustain itself.

Another complicating aspect of managing the Society's different entities manifests itself when one considers the effects of the change in the career paths of present-day professionals compared to their counterparts in previous genera­tions. Today, professionals are far less likely to spend significant portions of their careers serving a single institution. Mobility tends to increase interdepartmen­tal rivalries as leaders fight to show demonstrable successes that will qualify them for other opportunities.

Finally, and perhaps most important, is a way the Society is a victim of the strength of its collections. One can cite many cases where a library and museum have been folded into a single organization without debilitating difficulty, but in most of them it was quite clear which part of the collection predominates. If an institution's art museum is more renowned, its library collections play a supportive role. The culture has been built around such assumptions, so tension concerning the allocation of resources is minimized. The same is true in cases where it is the library that holds the preeminent collections. In the Society's case, because of the unusual strength of both collections, the Society has never established which en­tity gets priority. Staffs continue to fight battles over resources, autonomy, and power.

In some ways, it is not surprising that interweaving a library and a museum is so difficult when one considers how different the two institutions have become. Oversimplifying somewhat, a library's central charge is to hold collections and make them accessible for private study by individual scholars. By contrast, a museum is primarily expected to prepare its collections for public display to large groups of people. The two objectives spawn entities with very different person­alities: one is introverted; the other is extroverted. Not surprisingly, the cultures that have grown up around these two institutions are very different, and the lead­ers that come up through the ranks tend to exhibit those differences. Even the cataloging standards used by the two types of entities are different and not trans­ferable. Placing these two cultures together in a single, small organization that is woefully short of resources represents, at best, an extraordinary management and leadership challenge.

Governance

The Society began as a membership organization. For most of its history, it did not have a board of trustees; it had a librarian and a president elected by its members. It was not until 1938 that the Society was reorganized and a self-perpetuating board of trustees was established. Because this reorganization took place after the Society had received the $4.5 million Thompson bequest, the trustees were not called on to play an active role in overseeing the Society's financial affairs. Membership on the board was regarded more as a privilege than as a responsibility. Trustees got together once a month to hear about the Society's new acquisitions, to discuss mutual interests, and to enjoy one another's company. Once elected to the board, a trustee typically served for life.

Examine the following entry in the minutes, which was presented, in Decem­ber 1967, as the report of the legal committee on the subject of deaccessioning the paintings of Thomas Bryan:

For several generations we've been tryin’

To ease restrictions set by Bryan;

That is, to loosen up the strictures

Governing our use of his gorgeous pictures.

Now, though our treasury is diminished

We can report the Bryan case is finished!

With blood and tears, and a little fun,

The ghastly lawsuit is finally won!

The purpose of excerpting this entry is not to comment on the appropriate­ness of selling the Bryan pictures but rather to provide insight into the general tone of Society meetings in simpler times. When the Society's financial situation changed dramatically and abruptly in the early 1970s, circumstances demanded tough, serious, aggressive leadership. That the Society's board proved unable to provide it should not come as a surprise.

In the twenty-five years since 1970, the board has changed, but slowly. Between 1970 and 1980, there was little turnover on the board, and by 1980, the average age of its seventeen members had reached seventy. It was not until the mid 1980s that substantial changes occurred both in the makeup and the orga­nizational structure of the board. Unfortunately, the process was divisive and dis­tracting. When the Society needed leadership, it was preoccupied with issues that should have been resolved years before.

Just as the Society must compete with other New York cultural institutions for visitors, so must it compete for board members. Although the Society has been able to attract well-known and respected business and cultural leaders, too few of them have chosen to make the Society their overriding passion. Without a critical core of powerful and impassioned members, the Society's board has failed to provide either the leadership or the funding to make the Society successful. Establishing such a board remains one of the Society's chief challenges.

Options

What follows is a discussion of alternatives that could be pursued by the Society. The order of presentation is not meant to convey either the desirability or via­bility of the various options. Instead, purely for organizational purposes, the six alternatives start with the least drastic, maintenance of the Society in essen­tially its present form. Then, the most drastic alternative, a managed dissolution of the Society, is presented, followed by a series of increasingly less draconian possibilities. This list is not all-inclusive, nor could it be. There are surely options available to the Society that are not discussed here, as well as paths the Society could follow that combine aspects from several or perhaps all of the alternatives. It is hoped that these options and the associated discussion will serve to stimulate the creative thinking needed to overcome the obstacles that have consistently frus­trated efforts to maximize the impact of the Society's valuable collections.

Conclusions

As one steps back to think in broader terms about the future, one must ask what it is that is truly important about The New-York Historical Society. Put another way, what is it that everyone is so eager to save and to protect? Is it the institu­tion or its collections? The answer has profound implications.

If it is the collections of the Society that are preeminent, then the goal should not be to develop a plan that has the best chance of saving the Society in its present form but rather to find the plan that makes the most efficient use of the economic resources available to support cultural institutions. Pursuing such a goal forces one to address difficult, even sacrosanct issues. For example, everyone would like to see the Society's museum, library, and decorative arts collections remain together, but when is the overall cost too high? The Society has already sold parts of its collections to allow it to pursue this objective. How important, really, is it for the collections to be held in a single physical location? With the rapid advance of multimedia computer and communications technologies, how important will it be ten years from now? These are difficult questions, but they are questions the Society's board must begin to answer.

If the board decides to continue to operate the Society in its present form, the challenge is daunting. Perhaps the Society's biggest problem is that it has so many justifiable reasons for spending money. Who can argue if the Society wants to mount a major initiative to catalog every book, print, and manuscript in the library? Or if it plans to add conservation staff to arrest the deterioration of its museum collections? Or if it chooses to mount an aggressive exhibit, lecture series, and marketing campaign to establish itself as a vital and engaged mem­ber of the community? Evaluated individually and independently, these initiatives are all justifiable. But the Society has no money. More than anything else, it has been the pursuit of these honorable objectives that has resulted in the extraordi­nary deficits at the Society over the past seventeen years.

The solution to the Society's problems does not lie in correcting past wrongs or in finally doing the right thing. In fact, there really is no single answer or solu­tion. More than anything else, the Society must face reality. It must find a per­manent and sustainable balance among the many worthwhile uses of its limited resources. For the Society to have a chance to find that balance, expectations must be lowered. Problems nearly two centuries in the making are not going to be solved overnight. Observers, both supporters and critics alike, must take the long view and recognize that rehabilitation of the Society will be a very long process, achieved in small steps.