The Rotary Club of Akron had the pleasure of listening to Jon Fiume, Director and CEO of the Akron Art Museum at our Tuesday, May 24, 2022, Club meeting. Jon has been serving Akron’s arts and culture scene for over 20 years. His past contributions have included serving on the boards of the Akron Art Museum, Weathervane Playhouse, ArtsNow, and Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens. He is currently a Public Arts Commissioner for the City of Akron, board member Leadership Akron, member of the Diversity and Inclusion committee for ArtsNow, and a member of the Arts Advancement Council for the University of Akron. As of February 2022, Jon is serving as the John S. Knight Director & CEO of the Akron Art Museum. Jon began his presentation giving a little history of the museum. Volunteers were the sole staff until 1924, when city support made it possible to hire a professional director. The Great Depression tightened finances and ended City funding, forcing the Institute to again rely entirely on volunteers from 1931 to 1945. It functioned — much of that time in borrowed spaces — as an art center, offering classes and exhibiting mostly local artists. The collection was small, eclectic — containing archeological artifacts and decorative as well as fine art — and composed entirely of gifts. In 1937 the Institute moved into its first permanent home. Moving forward, for the past twenty-five years the Museum has continued to enrich the lives of those in Northeast Ohio and beyond through modern and contemporary art. During 2020, the Akron Art Museum went through some challenging times. The result was the development of a Transformation Plan. The plan has the goal of the Museum becoming a stronger, healthier institution, absent of biases. Plan components consist of the following: - Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion (DEAI) Training to increase the staff and board’s knowledge of implicit bias and to increase awareness in the areas of DEAI.
- Board Transformation Task Force to assess and determine opportunities to be a more highly effective board with consideration to the areas of board make-up, structure, board member orientation, committee structure, and others to be determined as needed/identified.
- Internal DEAI Working Group to identify and address DEAI opportunities within the organization, establish a DEAI statement, and improve the overall culture. This internal council is employee-led and does not contain members from the board or executive leadership.
- Community Advisory Board to increase communication and improve the overall relationship with all sectors of the community including other community leaders, members of the museum, and residents. Information was shared in the areas of DEAI, current events, and or challenges that all are facing.
- Mission, Vision, Values Work Group to ensure alignment with the newly established practices coming from the workaround DEAI. Members will include the board and staff with the work began in early 2021.
- Marketing and Communications Task Force to rebuild the community’s confidence in the Museum. Progress updates regarding the plan will be provided. Members will be made up of marketing and communications staff, advancement staff, board members, and an external communications firm representative.
- Development of a 12–24-month Institutional Plan defining the objectives of the Museum for fiscal year 2022.
What is happening at the Akron Art Museum now? Current Exhibitions: Reflections on Perception: April 9th – September 11, 2022 Reflections on Perception explores how artists working in realism employ such surfaces to create engaging compositions. Explore how artists use this compositional device to impact how and what the viewer perceives. Responsibility to Reveal: 30 Years of the Knight Purchase Award for Photographic Media: ends June 5, 2022. Celebrate the Akron Art Museum’s steadfast commitment to art photography through this exhibition surveying the history of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Purchase Award for Photographic Media. Upcoming Exhibitions: Good Hope: June 1, 2022 – May 14, 2023 The Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery, and Rory and Dedee O’Neil Lobby: Be inspired by the illustrations of this South African illustration studio. Good Hope transports visitors into the environs around the illustrators’ hometown, exploring the flora, fauna, and folklore. Exploration and humor are at the center of these wall-sized illustrations. Come get lost in whimsical, wondrous compositions. FRONT International 2022 Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows: July 16 – Oct 2, 2022 Taking its title from a 1957 poem by author Langston Hughes, Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows aims to promote contemporary art as an agent of transformation, a mode of healing, and a therapeutic process. The Akron Art Museum’s presentation will focus on artists who employ materials to create craft-based artwork to cope and explore relationships between objects and lived experience. Other Programs: The Akron Art Museum offers a variety of other programs. They include the Family Program, Teachers and Schools, and AAM At Home to name just a few. To learn more about these programs and other activities offered by the Art Museum, check out their website at https://akronartmuseum.org. Yours in Rotary Service Terry Dalton Akron Rotary Club Secretary and Scholarship Chair |
