What Every Museum Director Should Know about Working with Boards

Edward M. Luby

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781538188088
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Museum Administration
• Index: Business

While new directors learn how to manage and lead museums as part of their professional training and career development, the skills and knowledge required to work with boards—which are instrumental to a museum director's work—must somehow be acquired on the job as one's career progresses. What Every Museum Director Should Know about Working with Boards is designed to empower new and aspiring museum directors by equipping them with the skills and knowledge to work with boards.
What Every Museum Director Should Know about Working with Boards uses museum-based vignettes of all-too-true situations encountered by new museum directors to illustrate what museum directors need to understand about their work with museum boards, so that they have the skills and knowledge to identify, assess, and successfully navigate the common issues they will inevitably encounter as a director. Following the vignette, analysis of the situation and strategic guidance are offered.
A new director's understanding of how boards are structured and operate, how they will interact with the board, and what areas they will work on with the board are all critical to a new museum leader's success. However, busy new directors often do not have time to access the many widely dispersed resources about working with boards or to ascertain what parts of board operations will most affect their daily work. Consequently, What Every Museum Director Should Know about Working with Boards outlines how boards are organized, discusses the common points of contact between the director and the museum's board, and examines the kinds of challenges museum directors will likely encounter in working with their boards. Given the importance of museum boards to the success of museums and a director's understanding of boards to their own career development, What Every Museum Director Should Know about Working with Boards is an essential resource for new and aspiring museum directors.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigaph
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Why Understanding Museum Boards Matters
• Chapter 2: How Are Museums Organized?
• Chapter 3: What Is the Director’s Role in Working with the Board?
• Chapter 4: What Are the Core Responsibilities of Boards That Directors Need to Understand?
• Chapter 5: The Importance of Board Structure, Committees, and Meetings
• Chapter 6: Museum Supporters: Friends Groups and Advisory Committees
• Chapter 7: What Could Go Wrong? Collections Management Issues
• Chapter 8: Why Are We Displaying That? Exhibitions and Boards
• Chapter 9: Whose Job Is It, Really? Fundraising in Museums
• Chapter 10: Strategic Planning, Directors, and Boards: The Way Ahead
• Chapter 11: The Board and Key Issues Facing Museums Today
• Chapter 12: Bringing It All Together
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author