Episode 113: Heidi Zuckerman
CEO and Director of OCMA/The Orange County Museum of Art
00:52:14
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Show Notes
Heidi Zuckerman, a globally recognized leader in contemporary art, is the CEO and Director of OCMA/The Orange County Museum of Art, the creator and host of the podcast Conversations About Art, and the author of numerous books, including the Conversations with Artists book series.
Heidi sits down with host M.C. Sungaila to discuss her career path and share tips that will help women lawyers thrive in their careers as well. She also shares leadership lessons and shares thoughts on team building and creating a community.
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Relevant episode links:
Orange County Museum of Art, Heidi Zuckerman on Lance Armstrong’s Podcast, Lance Armstrong on Conversations About Art Podcast, 100th podcast – Conversations About Art Podcast, Mary Weatherford – Conversations About Art Podcast Episode, Helen Molesworth – Conversations About Art Podcast Episode, Philip Tinari – Conversations About Art Podcast Episode , Conversations About Art – Podcast, Moshe Safdie – Conversations About Art Podcast Episode, Conversations with Artists - Book
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About Heidi Zuckerman:
Heidi Zuckerman
As CEO and Director of OCMA/The Orange County Museum of Art, she is envisioning a twenty-first-century museum. Zuckerman built a new, ground-up project with Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Thom Mayne on time and on budget, raised more than $35 million in her first 20 months in the role, and welcomed more visitors to the museum in the first week of operations than previous annual attendance.
Transcript
Welcome to the show where we chronicle women's journeys to the bench, bar, and beyond and seek to inspire the next generation of women lawyers and women law students. We have an amazing guest. We’re breaking our norm of talking to women judges and lawyers, but we have an amazing arts leader and the new CEO and Director of the Orange County Museum of Art, Heidi Zuckerman. Welcome, Heidi.
Thanks for having me.
Before we started recording, there was so much in your journey as a leader of the art, an amazing new building and new cultural center in Orange County called the Orange County Museum of Art, but also previously leading change and transformation of the Aspen Art Museum as well. There's a lot that you can share in your journey in terms of leadership, lessons, team building, and creating community.
Thank you.
I wanted to ask because I don't know the path of a museum leader and how that all happens, or whether you ever thought when you got involved in the arts that you would be a director of a museum. What kind of inspiration did you have in becoming involved in the arts and arts administration?
It's fun that I'm on a legal show and something that also includes judges because when I was growing up, I wanted to be a judge. I never thought about being a lawyer, but I wanted to be a judge from the time I was a young kid. My assumption and my parents' assumption was that I would go to law school and that would be my path.
I grew up around art. My grandmother was a collector. She was an early entrepreneur. She was a pretty tough woman, to be honest, and very much about self-reliance. She was a role model in terms of breaking barriers being an early real estate developer in New York City and collecting art in the properties that she would acquire. I ended up realizing at a certain point that I had all this latent art knowledge and curiosity around it.
I had a Joseph Campbell burning-of-the-bush moment when I was a junior in college and a friend of mine said, “You seem to like this art thing.” There are some other things that I had done that would indicate his observation. He said, “What do you think about pursuing that as a career?” I looked into a program at Christie's Auctions house, which he had told me was 4 months in New York, 4 months in Paris, and 4 months in London. It turned out to be twelve months in London, which was as good. I told my parents that I was going to apply to that program instead of applying to law school. They told me that was a terrible idea and that no one can make a living in the art world, but my grandmother supported me for that first year and got me started. That's the start of a long career in art.
I had my first instinct for a career that was arts-oriented too. I thought, “I'll be a writer. I'll be a poet,” and then right afterward, I had this image of me starving in a garret. I thought, “Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s not poetry.” I write for a living as an appellate lawyer to persuade, but there's still storytelling in it. I dissuaded myself by thinking about starving in a garret at that point. It takes a lot of courage to do that, especially when you have one vision. You're like, “I'm going to be a judge. This is what I'm going to do.” To switch from that can be hard in itself, but then to have your family go, “We like that other idea better.”
A big part of my career has been about saying yes to opportunity, and to being pretty courageous and willing to go where the jobs were. I was willing to leave New York to take a job at the Berkeley Art Museum. I was willing to leave Northern California to move to Colorado to run the Aspen Art Museum. At that point, I had never been to the State of Colorado or frankly any state that touches the State of Colorado. I then moved to Orange County.
My son is a college senior. We've been talking about the different ways to choose your career path. My boyfriend famously tells a story about having grown up in Ohio, going to Notre Dame, pulling up the Farmer's Almanac to see where the most fun and settling was in San Diego, and then applying for jobs there. His number one thing was the weather. You can pick your location and get a job there. Depending on what your field is, sometimes the job itself dictates where you live. Something that characterizes my choices is being comfortable with the uncertainty of changing locations and rebuilding the community where I've gone. I've developed a special skill in how to do that because I have lived in a lot of places.
When you say yes to opportunities, that's important. There are a lot of things where you are too focused on one particular goal so you don't see the other opportunities that are off to the side. It’s almost the intent of shopping in one store and you don't notice all the other boutiques along the rest of the store perspective. There's something to be said for focus in that regard, but also being open-minded about other things. What does an opportunity look like to you? When you say yes to opportunities, what does that mean? How does that manifest?
Early in my career, I said yes to everything. I was curating exhibitions of people all over the place. For example, in Jersey City, Mexico City, a storefront space that my first husband and I opened in downtown Manhattan on the Lower East Side, and Ludlow Street. I was writing texts for gallery shows, writing catalog essays, designing catalogs for artists, and learning how to use graphic design and computer programs before other people did. I was trying to be of service to as many people in as many ways as possible knowing that I was curious about the art world.
I was saying yes when people invited me to their studio and saying yes to writing reviews of exhibitions. I was building my skillset, knowledge base, and my community. Over time, I was saying yes to joining non-profit boards. I was saying yes to stepping into vice chair roles or chair roles. I ended up as the chair of the Art Network for YPO because people start to see if you're capable. You get a lot of opportunities. People don't notice you unless you're doing things. I was being able to then be a little more discerning, like, “What is my objective? Why would I say yes? Why would I say no? What am I hoping to achieve? How can I be of service?”
When you step into vice-chair or chair roles, people start to see if you're capable. You get a lot of opportunities, but people don't notice you unless you're doing things.
I was curious about that because some people have been more intentional. I'm glad you mentioned that because at different stages, different things are good to do. To be less intentional, build your skills, and get your name out there in as many ways as possible is good. Say yes if you have an opportunity to do anything. Speak right, gain those board skills, and meet people. There's a point at which you do become a little bit more intentional in terms of which skills you want to improve, refresh, or layer onto the ones you already have.
Some of the guests on the show have mentioned being intentional about people they wanted to work with. It’s not even the organization, but rather saying, “This was such a great leader in certain ways that I felt like I didn't have those skills yet. I wanted to work with that person that had those skills.” That's something I hadn't thought about, but it’s being that specific, like, “I'm not going to an institution, but I'm going to work with a particular leader.”
That works both ways. It’s also not wanting to work with certain leaders or deciding to be a kind of leader based on experiences that you've had. I very much believe that every experience that I've had, I have gratitude for because that's how I'm sitting where I am in this moment and in this place. On your path, you have adversaries. You also have guides. They're both important. I've learned some of my most important lessons from people who were more adversarial than benevolent.
It might be painful, but you can grow a lot from that.
If you're saying yes to things and you're taking risks, then that's part of what you learn. I didn't tell a story that I felt ashamed about, which was I had been promised a job as a curator. I wasn't yet a curator and what I wanted to be was a curator. I had curated some things, but I wasn't a curator. I was promised a job. I was told that I needed to work out a contract that I had, and then I would be able to join that staff.
Over the course of 6 or 8 months, I worked for free. I introduced the man to my community of a lot of artists and a lot of gallerists. I gave a lot of ideas for exhibitions and put together shows. At the endpoint, when I was supposed to have been offered a job, he came up with a reason why he couldn't hire me after having already utilized my ideas and my contacts. It was a real learning for me. It was one of the instances where I decided to be more intentional about who I was going to work with, to be more thoughtful, and to realize that what I was bringing to the circumstance had value. It didn't matter how old I was. I was pretty young then. It didn't matter what experience I had or didn't have yet. I was adding value. That was important to me.
In a different situation, when I was a curator and had one kid, not yet two, I was told I couldn't have a second kid by a male director. It was at that moment that I decided I would become a museum director and I would treat people differently than I had been treated. I've always had a holistic approach to life. It is not even the idea of a work-life balance. It’s knowing that people can bring their whole selves to work and to be in the environment in an authentic way. They'll be grateful for that opportunity and help you build community.
That story you were talking about in terms of the curator and the job, I think about that, too, in terms of often, if you're a good person, you don't imagine that somebody could even do that. You’re like, “It never occurred to me that that could happen because it never would occur to me that somebody would do that.” You have to learn that the hard way. You said, “Be intentional about working with somebody who's more like you and wouldn't do something like that.”
I don't know if people recognize all of the different skills that you need to blend to be a curator and museum director. You touched on a lot of those in terms of the different experiences you were in working with boards and getting with the arts community and also the art appreciating community. There are all of these different skills that are rolled up into directing and curating a museum. What do you think are the key factors or skills to being an excellent museum director?
I'm a non-profit CEO. I'm the CEO and Director of the Orange County Museum of Art. I run a business like any for-profit business. The role of the museum CEO and director is diverse and is comprised of a lot of different verticals. I run 6 or 7 businesses under the umbrella of the larger business. Some of the verticals that I manage, vision, and operate are around education and learning retail.
We have a shop around food and beverage. We also have a restaurant cafe and bar. We have exhibitions. Within all of that, there is the fundraising, the earned revenue, the marketing, and the legal aspect. It is about philanthropy. It is about learning and education. It's around stewardship and advocacy. The most important skills are around having a passion for art, being a great storyteller, and also being exceptionally diplomatic.
Those are very good points. What comes to mind is people think of the art on the walls and the particular exhibits, but there are so many aspects to museums, especially since they're becoming more centers of the community. A lot of things flow through the museum space as well as the art that's there on the walls and in the gardens. Also, there are so many stakeholders in the museum from the board members to the larger community to the artists and the artist community to education. There are the schools and the children in the community. There's a lot. The sheer range and number of stakeholders require diplomacy.
I didn't even mention publishing. We also publish and use social media. We also interact with the government at the local, county, and state levels. There are a lot of aspects. We collaborate with other organizations in Orange County that are visual arts but also performing arts or even culinary arts. We also collaborate with other institutions across the country and across the world. We travel our shows abroad. We borrow works. There are a lot of different issues around what we do.
It is a multilayered environment. Therefore, you need all of those different skills you mentioned. You have to have lots of layers of different skills. It isn't just like, “I like art. I'm good with that.” There are a lot more things involved. The opening of the museum reveals the central role that it plays in the community in terms of inviting many of the other arts organizations to participate in the opening and all the culinary aspects. All the different things that were involved in the 24-hour opening of the new museum sets the tone for it as being the center of a lot of community activities, discussions, and things like that.
I hope so. As we were going over the list of things that I do as part of my role, you, in the end, wrapped up that you don't have to like art or be good at art. That is at the core of what I do and what we are as an institution. What gets me up every day and out of bed is an inherent belief that access to art is a basic human right and not a privilege.
My learned knowledge is that being around works of art makes my life better. I have a personal mission of connecting people to art and artists to make their lives better, too. There are a lot of different ways to do that, some of which we've gone over through publications, billboards, social media, or podcasts. We are putting the message out in ways that people trip over in their daily life. The idea, for me, is that people like to do things that are fun, so if we can make being around art fun, then people will be more inclined to come.
People like to do fun things. If we can make being around art fun, people will be more inclined to come.
Opening a museum in Orange County, a county of 3.1 million people, 34 different cities, and absent of a cultural downtown, the opportunity is to make the museum the cultural anchor for Orange County. To do that, we can't just say that we have to get people to come. My idea was to make the museum open for 24 hours and to involve a diverse amount of people in the hourly programming. It was so that there would be a built-in audience for some of the people who would be performing, or their friends, families, or communities.
It was a way for people to be able to see themselves in the museum because they would already have been there. With the 24-hour programming and the way I was talking about it, I talked about movies for insomniacs. People would laugh every time I said that, but it was packed. People were watching movies from 1:00 AM until 3:00 AM.
I was wondering about the early-morning and late-night programming. There was yoga, sound baths, and then musical, and other performances, too, from other art groups in the community. I thought those were among the most interesting. I wondered how many people had attended those. They were popular.
It was super well-attended. People who know me were like, “That was your kind of programming,” because I drink matcha every day, I do yoga, and I am interested in tarot and sound baths. I walked the line as we had thousands of people standing, waiting to come into the museum. We had 10,000 people within the first 24 hours. We had another 2,000 to 4,000 people that we couldn't even get into the museum. In our first five days of being open, we saw another 10,000 people. In the first week, we had 20,000 people. At 12:45 AM, there were still 2,000 people in line.
We had 250 people doing yoga as the sun rose on the 9th of October 2022. We had 300 people in line for the tarot card reading. We had galleries of thirteen women filled with people who were experiencing a sound bath. Having that kind of shared experience with people that you know but also people that you don't know is how you build community. That's how you feel like the museum is your place. The fact that we have free general admission for the first ten years there, we're removing all sorts of barriers to entry.
There is so much inherent genius in that programming, both that you're having people claim the space as their own, and that no matter who you are or what your interest could be in this whole variety, you can come at various points in time where your people are there.
It’s for you to not be self-select.
That's great. There is a sense of ownership in the new building and in the museum as a result of it. Certainly, there's a community, but also a sense of, “That’s my museum.” It’s clever in so many different ways, and then also bringing the other arts organizations into it because they feel welcomed in that space, too. There can be so much friction and competition sometimes between different art organizations that feel like they're in competition for funds or what have you with each other. It’s to say, “This is a space where we're all welcome and we can celebrate all different kinds of art.” The last point you mentioned about the free admission, to me, is an example of a good partnership with the government because that is part of what ensured that could happen.
It's all private.
Is it?
Yeah. We do not have funding from the government for admission at all. We are the Orange County Museum of Art, but we are a private museum. We do have some government support, which is wonderful, from Orange County Supervisor, Katrina Foley. That was one specific grant that was made to help bring school kids and give them free lunch when they come to the museum.
That was my mistake. That's right.
The free general admission for the first ten years is a private company in Orange County and an international company, Lugano Diamonds. It is important for me that people know differently from the LA County Museum of Art or LACMA where they get a ton of public funding. Particularly, for capital as well, we haven't had a dollar of government support for capital, which is an important point to make. Separate from that, it is the idea that this is a museum for everyone.
We have put it on our website, and we're putting it on our front door as a nudge, that says, “Everyone is welcome.” That's what we keep saying. We’re like, “This is your museum.” When I was there in opening the 24-hour opening and closing the 24-hour opening, I said to everyone, “This is your museum. This is our museum,” and people believe me. That's so awesome.
You exemplified it in the opening. If people can see that and feel that, then they're going to believe it as opposed to someone just saying it. You have gained skills in creating community from your own experience in moving from several different locations and needing to create community each time you've done that. You can bring that personal experience to what makes you feel welcome and what gives some sense to you of community and bring that to the museum also.
During the pandemic, I was thinking about how people couldn't go to museums. They couldn't go to galleries. They couldn't leave their house in a lot of instances. People were in front of their computers all this time and looking at art. They were going to museum websites. I was thinking about how you benefit in any situation. I benefit in any situation from a guide who knows what they're doing. I like being in nature. I have gone river rafting, and I would never go without a guide ever. I couldn't relax. I wouldn't feel comfortable. I would be concerned for my safety. I started thinking about an art guide and what would be a helpful suggested way of looking at art. It’s not like a cheat sheet, but almost that if you do these five things, then you build your confidence and set people off on their course.
I wrote these five suggested ways of looking at art. We have printed them and put them at the entrance to the galleries of the museum. We put them on a tote bag. People were carrying them around and using them to ask these questions to their kids. What I've been saying about these five suggested ways of looking at art is they're also about how to look at life and that fusion of art and life and how similar the two things are.
The fifth point is, “Do I care?” It empowers everyone to have an opinion and say, “It matters what you think. You matter.” That's part of why people are coming to the museum. It’s because we're saying to people, “You matter.” Who knew that art could be a way to let people know that they matter? That was my hope and dream.
I remember seeing those questions at the entrance to the gallery as well. I like those because it's another way of causing people to be engaged with the art at their own level. Sometimes, people feel like, “There's only one thing to take from this piece of art or whatever the received wisdom is that I'm supposed to learn about this piece of art.” There is a give and take between the art and the viewer, and also what you bring to it and what you see. We are valuing different perspectives.
I like to say that all works of art are self-portraits of the person who made them and also the person who is looking at the work. There's inherent opportunity there, and that's also a message about life. Does one talk about what we get to do, or does one talk about what we have to do? Are we looking at opportunities or are we looking at challenges? Are we looking at change with curiosity or are we looking at it with concern?
It’s maybe a little bit of both sometimes. It’s concern first and then curiosity most often. If you didn't get to curiosity first, that's good. That's cool. I didn't know the story about those five questions at the entrance. That makes sense. I'm not sure how to frame it, but in terms of leading your teams and getting what you need to succeed, I thought that was an interesting point that translates to a lot of leaders in a lot of different settings. It is to understand what it is you need to have in your team to succeed and then make sure that you get it. It is making sure that you negotiate for it and make sure that you set your own self up to succeed in a new role. I thought you had a good perspective on that and an understanding of what you personally need to succeed, particularly in your new role.
I came into an institution that was 60 years old this 2022 and had a lot of learned history. Having had lots of different names, lots of different homes, and different associations in people's minds, it was important to me that I could come in and build a new culture. The way that culture gets built is it's easier if it's not just one person talking into space or talking into a vacuum. It was important for me to be able to bring some people with me who had worked with me before.
With the opening of the Orange County Museum of Art, I'm the first woman ever to have done two ground-up museum projects in America. I had a very short runway to get this done. I had about twenty months to do this whereas, in Aspen, I had about ten years. This project is substantially bigger than the Aspen Art Museum. It is much bigger.
It is to be able to step into a project that was already in motion, make changes to it, change out the client representative, make changes to the chair or the building committee, change some of the subcontractors that would be visible in perpetuity in the new building, to be able to collaborate with the architect to do an audit of the entire building and how it functioned, and to make enhancements to the gallery spaces, offices, and operations of the institution. It was important for me to be able to bring some people with me who had worked with me before so that we could speak in shorthand about some of the things that we wanted to make happen.
When you put it that way in that perspective, you're like, “I have this big thing to accomplish in a very short period of time. If on top of that I'm hiring and training brand new people to step into that, it's going to take way too much time to do all of that. It’s going to be a challenge.”
We hired a ton of people and have trained them. It was important to me that there were a few key people to fill some key roles to help amplify the vision and the culture. There were people who chose to move here from other jobs. You're specifically referencing Kelsey Nemirov who I did say that I wanted to specifically hire as part of my contract. That would be important to me, so I did write her specifically.
Once I came and then did an assessment of the staff who was here and who we had in certain roles, I realized that we needed a chief curator. I realized we needed a director of learning and engagement. For both of those roles, I was able to hire women who had worked for me in Aspen and who had gone on to other places, like Cleveland in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland and Chicago in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. I had to lure them here. I was able to lure our client representative from Colorado who had gone on to do other projects and had him move here with his wife to take this role. I have a variety of other people. I have a graphic designer, IT, and a lot of different roles.
I mentioned that because, especially in the legal space, if lawyers are changing firms or changing their jobs, they don't often think about that in terms of, “What do I need to succeed? Who do I need as key points on my team to do that?” I thought that was a valuable thought for people. You want to make sure that you succeed in the new role, especially if it's challenging, that you're taking. You want to think, “What do I need? What are the key things that I need to be able to deliver on that?”
I have an amazing employment attorney who negotiated my contract here at the Orange County Museum of Art and also negotiated my contract at the Aspen Art Museum, and every time that it got revised. I believe in the law and I believe in contracts. I believe that people want to do the right thing. It's always helpful that there are things put into place to protect everyone.
People want to do the right thing, but it's always helpful that things be put into place, like laws and contracts, to protect everyone.
There are good guideposts in the contract for where things are going. Agreements are only as good as the people who are agreeing to them or signing onto them on both sides. There's always that. I thought that was a good way of thinking about things that I thought maybe would be a kernel of wisdom for people in a profession that don't think about it in that same way. Tell me about your own podcast. You have a book, too. I'm curious about how that got started, what your vision was for your podcast, and how it's evolved.
Thank you. I have, for many years, done these conversations with artists. It was one of the things that I first said yes to. I was a kid in New York and an artist named Byron Kim said, “You have a way of being able to talk with artists and getting people to be able to share about their work that seems unique and different. Why don't you think about recording these conversations?” so I did. That was a long time ago. It was many years ago. I did that with Byron Kim. I did that with an artist named Kim Jones and an artist named Doug Aitken who was at the galas and is one of my longest-time friends. I've been doing it for a long time and never thought about recording them other than those first few.
When I went to Aspen, the head of PR there asked me if I would consider doing a TV show, so I did a local TV show that was called Art Matters that had similar conversations. I would also do them in front of a live audience, and people would always love them. For years, people would say, “Why don't you do more of this? Why don't you look at a bigger audience?” I came up with an idea for a TV show and was signed to Paramount Television.
There were some situations outside of my TV show that changed the leadership at Paramount Television. The woman who had signed the TV show when we were talking about what to do next, it was her idea, a woman named Amy Powell, for me to do a podcast. This is in 2019. There weren't a lot of podcasts then. I had been working with these conversations with the artist format.
Lance Armstrong is a good friend of mine. I had been on his podcast. That was the only time I had been on a podcast. I asked him what he thought about me doing that and he thought it was a great idea. He introduced me to his producer who agreed to produce my podcast. Lance was my first guest. He was great and I was terrible. I had no idea how to do it. He is a really good friend. We talk all the time. As soon as the microphone turned on, I clammed up. I leave it up there to show myself how far I've come. It is the 18th of October 2022, and I released my 100th podcast.
Congratulations. That is such a huge milestone.
I didn't even realize. I thought it was 99, and then it came up on Spotify and it said Episode 100. I thought that I would do them every other week, which I started. The first one went up with Lance in December of 2019, and then the second one was with an artist named Mary Weatherford. The third one was either Helen Molesworth or Christina Quarles.
I was doing them every other week. I was recording them all in person, so I would travel to wherever anyone was. There was a pandemic when the music stopped and everyone was stuck where they were. My son said, “Everyone's stuck at home. You should move your podcast every week,” so then I did. I did it on Zoom. I was able to record one with a friend of mine, Philip Tinari, who was in Beijing during the lockdown. I had a guy who runs a business in Australia and an artist in South Africa. It became very global. I also had an artist in India. They were from all over.
I love doing them. It is fun for me. They're conversations, not interviews. I don't give the questions in advance. I learn something every time. There's something about recording on Zoom where you have your AirPods on and the intimacy of someone's voice going right into your brain, the thoughtfulness, quiet, and contemplation. I enjoy them. It’s called Conversations About Art.
There are artists, athletes, CEOs, musicians, and politicians. A lot of them are friends of mine, and some of them are people that I have never met before but admire. I had the architect, Moshe Safdie, on and was super moved by his architecture when I was a kid. That was a really exciting moment. Separate from that but not unrelated, I have a book series called Conversations with Artists. There are three volumes out. Each one is a different color, so you can know if you're looking at volumes 1, 2, or 3. I’m working on volume four.
That's separate from the podcast interviews, so it's different people and different interviews.
They’re conversations, not interviews. Some of them are parts of the podcast. The podcasts are shorter. The podcasts are more quippy and more edited. The conversations are longer. A bunch of them predate the podcast, so they were recorded over time. In volume three, there's an amazing conversation with an artist named Marlo Pascual who died in the last few years. It was great to be able to share that. It’s a mix.
I was asking because there are books that come out of podcasts or relate to podcasts. How much overlap there is between them varies depending on the situation. Each format is unique and is good for different things. Otherwise, you wouldn't have both of them. That's so great. It's so interesting that it started earlier that you had a knack for drawing people out and allowing them to share more of their thoughts on art and their own art as well.
It connects to a couple of things. One I would say is when I worked at the Berkeley Art Museum, our director of education had come from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I classically would over-prepare for everything. I was going to do a conversation with the Chinese artist who lives in New York named Cai Guo-Qiang Chang who does these amazing explosion events. I had prepared. I'd written up all these questions. She took my note cards from me. Her name was Sherri Goodman. She said, “You know more about this artist and this subject than anyone in the room. No one wants to see you read your note cards. Be present, listen to what he says, and think about what you want to ask. You'll be fine.” She was right.
If I'm thanking sponsors at a gala or something like that where I have to hit each one because it is super important that everyone would be recognized, I'll have note cards. In general, I don't prep. I don't have preconceived notions. I'm present in that moment. With my YPO Forum a few years ago, we worked on an analysis of our superpower. It's great exercise. We shared three times that we had been in the flow, not in a work situation, but in life.
One time, we had been in the flow in a work situation and then everyone took notes, worked with a facilitator, and figured out what everyone's superpower was. Other than sharing your story about when you were in the flow, you couldn't be part of the dialogue, the spitballing, or the brainstorming about what your superpower was. You got to sit there and listen to people that knew you quite well consider you. My YPO Forum decided that my superpower is spontaneous brilliance, and that comes into play in these conversations. Fearlessly being present and courageously conversing makes it fun.
There's so much in there. The first thing is that sense of recognizing sometimes you're too close to yourself that with some of your special strengths that not a lot of other people share, you think, “Everybody must have those.” You're almost blind to them because you're like, “That's natural. Isn't that how everybody operates?” That whole concept of having others do that, see things, and you're like, “I don't think that's special,” is pretty interesting. I know I had various tests and personality things like StrengthsFinder tests. When they're presented to you, you look at it and go, “I don't think that's unique.” I'm glad somebody else could see it.
The other thing is being present and the note thing. A lot of lawyers have that experience. I do. We're always worried we're going to forget something. We stand up at the lectern when we're going to present our argument to the court. We all have this fear of, “I’m going to forget my name. I'm going to forget the judges. I'm going to forget everything.” I have to write that down. In case something horrible happens, I'm going to have it down to look at. Your point is about being, “That's fine in case it was important not to forget something,” but to be prepared enough that you can be present. That's where the magic happens. Whether it's in having conversations with judges or you're on trial, or whatever kind of presentation, that's listening and being present.
I have a long time meditation practice. It is the idea of being able to be quiet and have a quiet mind. I'm an idea generator. I have so many ideas all the time, like the 24-hour opening and all these different things. A big part of being able to do that is to be able to tap into that sense of quiet and to hear the idea. Usually, people are focused on small details. Being able to lift up from that, lift up your thought, and lift up your mind to get away from that clutter and be able to focus on being open to receiving ideas is where the active genius comes in.
Sometimes, being in nature or being outside is also helpful for getting outside yourself and seeing the bigger picture. That is often where I can get epiphanies too, like going for a walk on the beach or something like that. Suddenly, something will occur to you. You're like, “If I hadn't done that, I never would've gotten that idea or been receptive to it.”
I love nature. For me, I have a real commitment to being in service of something greater. It is being open to the idea that what we do matters and doing merit on a daily basis. I’m like, “How can I help?” That's what I ask all the time. I’m like, “How can I help? What can I do?”
Everybody has what's meaningful to them. It’s maybe different, but ultimately, doing something beyond yourself in service of something well-bound to yourself is generally a key to meaning and a sense of fulfillment. That's a good point to ask that question, though. Sometimes, we don't ask the question, “What's my highest and best use? How can I serve today?” I don't know if we always ask that. That's part of your meditation and training yourself to be present.
I like the idea that if you don't feel good or if you're having a hard day or a down day, do something for someone else. You’ll always feel better.
That's right. You get a lot from that. The other person might benefit, but you also benefit. The overall community and the sense that you're helping create by doing that, by being kind, and by doing thoughtful things help change the energy, the air, or whatever it is. It keeps adding and multiplying within the community also.
I agree. We started a standing staff meeting. It is on Tuesdays at 9:30 AM. I talked to our team about the idea of a Quaker meeting. I don’t know if your audience knows. I went to school in Philadelphia. In the Quaker meeting, there isn't necessarily a leader, but there can be someone who's in charge of tending to the meeting. You speak if you feel called to speak. You don't speak to be heard. You don't speak to check the box. You speak when you feel called to speak.
I had our team meet outside on the lower part of the grand staircase. We were looking out on the plaza where we had so many people coming into the museum. I talked about kindness and I also talked about complaint. I talked about how within complaint, if it can be seen that someone is complaining about something, it’s because they care. People only complain about things that they care about. If you can find out what the person cares about, it's often something that you care about, too. There's more commonality than people think.
People only complain about things that they care about. If you can find out what they care about, it's often something you care about, too. There's more commonality than people think.
One of our team members was moved. She came up to me after. She didn't want to speak in front of everyone. She talked to me about a children's book that her grandchildren read, which is called A Basket of Kindness. She was talking about how they fill up the basket every day and how when I was talking about meeting with kindness, that moved her.
That resonated with her based on that. My mother and I talk about that, too, in terms of, “Are you going to put bricks in your basket, or are you going to put other things in your basket today? It's your choice. If you put a brick in, you can take it out, but you want to make sure it's your brick and not somebody else's brick.” All of that can help when it's a challenging day. I like the point you made that inherent in a complaint is some element of caring. People wouldn't bother. If they didn't care, they wouldn't complain. They wouldn't make any commentary because it didn't mean enough to them. You’re using that as a bridge to connection.
A lot of times, what people complain about has something to do with how they see themselves. They want to be considered, seen, and heard. Most people do want to consider other people, see other people, and hear other people. Being able to do the both-and instead of the either-or is pretty powerful.
That and-versus and either-or thing is a powerful exercise in a lot of different ways. You sometimes think, “I can do this, or I can do that.” Who said that they were two separate binary choices? Maybe they're not. That makes such a difference in how you approach something when you say and instead of or.
I've thought about that my whole career.
That's a good point. Another powerful method of engaging everyone which brings out feminine power and energy is using the circle way of talking and sharing. Only when somebody feels called or feels that it's meaningful or appropriate does someone engage. It’s looking at the holding space for everyone in that circle and making people feel comfortable in sharing as well.
That's also been pretty effective as far as I've seen in various retreats and things that I've been at. It has unleashed what I think is the positive side of female power. I want to circle back to your initial thing where you said, “I wanted to be a judge, but then, I went into the art world.” What do you think about that? Whatever you thought would make you a good judge, do you use that in being a good museum director?
I don't know that I knew what being a judge was. I got a speeding ticket and I went to court on Zoom. I was probably the third to last person that was heard, so I heard everyone else's cases. I witnessed the judge having compassion and empathy for everyone that was before him. I was witnessing people who could hear him and could understand what he was saying and how he was encouraging people to take offers that he was given the authority to make. What I do, hopefully, is from a comparable place of empathy and compassion. Where that comes from is different for everyone.
I do believe that what I do is in service of something greater than me. It is about the power of art and the power of art to affect change, keep company, combat loneliness, and affect mental health. I feel that it's an honor and a privilege to be able to have this position. I've been in it for a long time and I've always felt that it's an honor and a privilege. That's essential to always keep in mind. I would say that there are certainly some affinities between the role of a judge and the role of a museum CEO and director.
Having a sense of humility in the position is essential to success both as a judge and as a leader overall. In terms of having known and spoken with a lot of judges on the program, there are a couple of things in your discussion that come out to me in terms of judges being decisive. They're decision-makers. They have to decide on a path and move things forward towards that.
There's also a tremendous convening power. It’s that soft power that judges have in terms of convening the community around particular issues and calling people to the table to have discussions to highlight the issues that should be discussed and might not be discussed if the judge wasn't there to convene them. I see that in your work with the museum as well in terms of creating that sense of community and convening around the power of art.
Thank you for that.
Those are the parallels I see. Thank you so much for joining the show and having this amazing discussion. You are a strong and confident, but humble female leader. There's so much to learn from your discussion. Thank you.
Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.