When Adam Levine, the Toledo Museum of Art’s new director, stepped into Classic Court earlier this week to talk to community members about a bronze sculpture of the mythical Greek hero Hercle from the ancient Etruscan civilization, his listening audience was nowhere in sight.
The assembly of museum-goers that usually gathers around an experienced curator and art historian in anticipation of a comprehensive storytelling session was absent, at least physically. Instead, Levine’s voice echoed in the large, empty hall as he spoke by video from his cell phone to thousands of museum followers on Instagram.
It’s how Levine’s first days as TMA’s 11th director are going. Stepping into the role now also means stepping into the country’s “new normal” forced by the global coronavirus pandemic. It changes all of us, he told The Blade during a phone interview earlier this week.
“In the short term, there are all sorts of plans and contingencies that one needs to put in place that weren’t imaginable a year ago,” Levine said. “But on the other side of things, while this is unprecedented in our lifetime, it is not unprecedented in human history, and art museums, with their deep historical collections, remind us that humans are resilient and we make it through, and this is no exception.”
A plan in unprecedented times
In following the state of Ohio’s shelter-in-place lead that prohibits large gatherings in an attempt to contain the contagion, TMA closed on March 17, with no definitive opening date in play. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is opening businesses and other economic structures in phases, and entertainment is lower on the priority list.
Levine, who is no stranger to the Toledo museum where he served in various roles over a six-year period before he left in 2018 to serve as director of the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Fla. He was ultimately chosen in January from a field of 14 candidates to come back and oversee the Glass City institution.
It was a time when no one foresaw what would happen in a span of just weeks, including TMA board of directors chairman Randy Oostra.
“It provides a lot of challenges for every organization and every person, and it’s the same for TMA and its future and how we have to think about bringing the staff back and bringing people back,” Oostra said.
In his first two weeks, Levine has been working virtually with a mostly remote staff and some essential onsite employees to put together the best short-term plan to be up and running when it’s time — in whatever form that has to take. He splits time between his Toledo home and the now almost desolate interior of the museum.
A task force of staff members and an environmental health and safety field has presented a plan to the board of trustees that included reopening mechanisms with the ability to be fluid as the coronavirus allows, Oostra said. That plan will be shared and compared with reopening plans at other Toledo companies — ProMedica, Owens-Corning, KeyBank, and The Andersons — during a webinar this week, the chairman said.
“We are talking to companies and really looking at safety first. It starts with TMAs cleanliness and social distancing, how many people can be in the art museum at one time. Just the way people flow through the museum, Adam and the team have been looking at that,” Oostra said. “Do you have masks for people, are you going to require them if people don’t have them, do you provide masks, do you take temperatures?”
The institution is also looking at its financial situation through the pandemic. In Fiscal Year 2019, which ran from July, 2018, through June, 2019, the museum ran on a $16.2 million budget and welcomed more than 383,000 visitors. The museum declined to release any financial numbers for the 2020 Fiscal Year.
The museum was approved for a small business loan as part of the Payroll Protection program administered through the U.S. Small Business Administration, to allow the museum’s staff of 250 to continue working and get a paycheck, and is looking at federal grants, Oostra said. The museum declined to release the amount of the loan. TMA offers free admission to its visitors, drawing most of its revenue in from endowment, investments and donations.
Levine, 33, who has degrees in anthropology, art history, mathematics and social science from Dartmouth College, and received his master’s and doctorate degrees in art history from the University of Oxford, first came to TMA in 2013 after being named to the Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral fellowship. He served in such roles as head of visitor engagement, associate director, and curator of ancient art, and finally as deputy director in early 2018 before his departure later that year.
His directorship appointment serves to replace former director Brian Kennedy, who departed TMA a few months after Levine to be director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass.
John Stanley, who came on at TMA in March 2019 as director of special projects, served as director in the interim.
Levine’s initial plan to spend his first 100 days as director listening to staff, stakeholders and community members about the best way to move the museum forward through outreach and put together a strong three-to-five-year, staff-led strategic plan hasn’t changed, he said, but rather has taken on a different form.
“The short answer is, there’s been lots of listening, a lot of learning; nothing has changed but there are a lot more one-on-one and small-group conversations instead of large-group get togethers,” he said.
Historic hope
Levine uses history as a reminder that we have been here before. He harkens back to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 — a time when the 1901-opened Toledo museum existed and persisted. The museum holds ancient artwork from the 14th century; pieces that emerged during the same time period the Bubonic Plague swept across most of Europe and the Mediterranean area.
From the temporarily empty halls of TMA, its new director remains optimistic.
“Part of the benefit of working for an institution that holds that history of resilience is that you believe in the Toledo Museum of Art’s capacity to overcome,” he said. “While a task force sounds like a very pragmatic operational thing … that is the first step for this institution in serving its part and helping overcome COVID — not the medical science of it, but the emotional toll of it. That is our lane in all of this. And we are getting ready to serve this community.”
From 10th to 11th
In January of this year, Adam Levine was chosen as the 10th director of the Toledo Museum of Art. That changed this past week, when the board of directors unanimously passed a resolution to reclassify interim director John Stanley’s status to director.
Per the resolution, Stanley will now be viewed as the 10th director of TMA, making Levine the 11th director.
Stanley, who came on board in March, 2019, to serve as director of special projects and almost immediately moved into the role of interim director with the departure of 9th director Brian Kennedy. He has now moved into the role of special adviser to the museum, and will consult on an as-needed basis.
Stanley, a Toledo native, began his career at TMA in 1979 as a stock boy, and served as the chief operating officer and deputy/assistant director at TMA from 1987 to 1995. He moved on to serve as chief operating officer and deputy director for programs and services at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he served as the chief operating officer and deputy director for programs and services. He returned to Toledo after serving as COO for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
First Published May 2, 2020, 7:23 p.m.
