How to Close a Museum: A Practical Guide

by Susana Smith Bautista

How to Close a Museum: A Practical Guide answers your questions about closing a museum. Even if you are just considering your options during difficult times and planning for your future, this book takes you through all the legal, ethical, and operational questions to start thinking about. It clearly lays out all the steps to follow to dissolve the nonprofit corporation, how to work with the board, disperse assets, create a final staffing plan, media relations, archival materials, community relations, and how to deal with donors and preserve the legacy of the organization. Included in the book are valuable forms, creative ideas, and sample documents to save you time. Written by Dr. Susana Bautista, an experienced museum administrator, curator, and museologist, who personally went though this process of closing a museum as the last executive director of the Pasadena Museum of California Art in 2018. She will recount her experiences and lessons learned, as well as those of other museum leaders who have gone through similar experiences, so that all museum professionals will be better prepared for what is always a stressful and emotional experience.

208 pages, Paperback

Published June 15, 2021

Reviews

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good guide to have 1) as you're planning to close your museum (temporarily or permanently), 2) if you think you might need to close your museum (temporarily or permanently), 3) as you're writing planning documents for your museum while it's opening or still healthy.

If you think you need to close your museum, I'm sorry :( That sucks. But this book will let you know lots of things to consider as you're working through the process, including legalities and ethics to keep in mind, the role of your Board of Directors, communicating with staff and the public, taking inventories of your collections and non-collections assets (desks, hooks, webpage, ... ), on and on. Bautista gives a number of case studies, as well as specifics for a few different states, but as she says early on, get a lawyer. Every state is different, and you can't do this on your own. Even if you have a lawyer on staff or on your board, consider getting an outside lawyer who is impartial and there's no possibly conflicts of interest.

This book also has tips about planning that can help you avoid closing or being in a position where you need to think about it, which, I imagine, would/could be useful, even if you don't need it now (Like they say, plan ahead of time, when you have a clear head, rather than waiting until you're panicked).