Club Newsletter for January 30, 2013
January 30, 2013 Newsletter
By John Hammer
Charlotte Shelburne Rotary
Wednesday, January 30, 2013, 7:15 a.m.
Trinity Episcopal Church Community Room
Welcome
President Adam Bartsch opened the meeting with the Pledge and called on Kris Engstrom to give the devotional.
Guests: Steve and Sharon LeClaire, Prospective Members
Boston Neary, Shelburne Farms
Sam Akerson – Speaker, Shelburne Museum
Quote for the Day: “This club is amazing. You make it all happen!”
The Word for the Day: Appears below with definition.
Upcoming:
February 6 – Martin Maxim, United Way
February 13 - Committee Meetings – Chairs will report (2-3 Minutes)
June 6: District Governor Change of Guard at Shelburne Farms Coach Barn. (Our club will play a key role in this event.)
Announcements
Rotary Future Vision
President Adam and Pat Sokolowski attended a Rotary Future Visioning meeting last weekend in Lebanon. For the most part it covered the new Rotary grant process and how the Rotary Foundation will be allocating the funds it gathers on an annual basis. The new program which goes into effect next July 1, will allocate one half of all the funds donated to the Foundation Annual Fund back to the districts from which they come. The other half will remain with the World Fund for international and other general projects and programs. In this way, the districts have more control over how the money raised can be applied to their own projects.
Pat baked banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting today and was giving them out to those who participated in the matching Foundation grant program. There are still a few openings left.
It was reported that Caroline Jones, this Club’s candidate for the Rotary Speech contest, passed the third stage at Lebanon and will go for the district prize in later this spring.
President Adam called Past President Kris Engstrom up to receive a Rotary Club award for having a club which had exceeded $1,000 donations for three consecutive years. Kris’s comment was, “This club is amazing. You make it all happen!”
Jim Spad’s Humor
A priest was presenting a special children’s Easter mass to the congregation. During the message, he asked the children if they knew what the resurrection was.
Now asking questions during children’s mass is crucial, but at the same time, asking the children questions in front of a congregation can also be very dangerous.
Having asked the children if they knew the meaning of the resurrection, a little boy raised his hand. The priest called on him and the little boy said, “All I know is that if you have a resurrection that lasts more than four hours you are supposed to call the doctor.”
Sergeant at Arms
Richard Fox wanted to make it easy today and asked for fines from anyone who was willing to predict 1) The outcome of the Super Bowl Game or, 2) The outcome of Punxsutawney Phil’s excursion at Gobbler’s Knob on Groundhog Day.
Fines
Tom Glaser – Heading to Florida today.
Gary Marcotte – For birthday on the 28th.
George Schiavonne – Appertaining* to nothing in particular, today is the 131st anniversary of FDR’s birth. (George received great approbation for making this fact known)
Jim Spadaccini – Will be going into the hospital next week for an operation. He is very hopeful of a positive outcome.
Ric Flood – Made known of the fact that our pot of $252, is greater than the sum total of Zimbabwe’s national treasury today which is the equivalent of $217.
Dave Jonah – Birthday this Friday
Linda Barker – Announced that she is about to become a grandmother.
Kris Engstrom – Happy that Steve and Sharon LeClaire are here as guests.
Robert Maynes - Drew the King of Diamonds. Rollover the $252 pot.
As best as could be counted there were 7 persons backing the Ravens and 5 for the 49ers. Punxsutawney Phil got 8 votes for not seeing his shadow.
Speaker – Sam Akerson, Development Officer for the Shelburne Museum
Sam Akerson gave a presentation on the new Center for Art and Education. The focus of the presentation was an animated video of the building which is scheduled to open in late summer or early autumn of this year.
The museum has always sought to have a year-round component with gallery and museum space. Electra Havemeyer Webb discussed the need at the first board meeting and beginning with the round barn in the 1980s the idea began to take shape. Next came the store and finally this last piece.
In the 1990s the attendance at outdoor museums began to drop with the change in tourism. The baby boomers did not like bus tours and fall foliage tours took a hit. Furthermore, local visitation began to wane such that the 30,000 represented by this market segment dropped. This represented about 25% of the visitors. Locals became blasé because they felt that displays didn’t change all that often and thus they lacked reasons for frequent visitation. Things became so bad that in the 1990s the museum had to ‘de-access’ a number of their impressionist paintings to build an endowment. While they took a lot of heat for it, it was these sales that saved the museum from going under.
Then in the mid ‘90s they began broadening and changing their programs with new things, new temporary exhibits (Georgia O’Keefe, Ansel Adams, etc.), the ‘50s home (which went on for six more years than the original two years planned), and temporary exhibits of more popular cultural objects (motorcycles, Vermont firearms, toys, etc.), and the restoration of the ‘Ti.’ A further 12 buildings were renovated and the gardens and grounds gained six new gardens including the new entrance and peonies. It turned out that visitors enjoyed visiting the grounds almost as much as they did the exhibits.
The museum concentrated on getting the local and regional guests to come back for repeated visits. In 2000 the distribution of visitors was about 70 percent from out of state. Now it is 55% from in state. Part of that has been due to the slowdown in general tourism, though a larger part of that redistribution has been the programs created to draw local people back.
In 2006-7 there was a renewed push to get more modern galleries and education spaces, especially to make experiences better for schools and adults interested in educational programs. Ten thousand school children visit the museum a year. This led to the new Center for Art and Education.
The decision to make it a modern design was a distinct choice because the diversity of buildings on the site made it difficult to reflect any particular period. As it turns out about 50% like it and 50% don’t. The result was the third fully executed design that was submitted. The final exterior is of classic design incorporating the stones that are found in the foundation of the round barn and the cedar woodwork that is found in many of the buildings on the grounds.
The interior will contain a 135-seat auditorium with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the ‘Ti’ and the grounds. It will feature lectures, films, and modest music programs. It will also be available for community use.
Elsewhere there will be 5000 square feet of gallery and museum space with movable interior walls. It is envisioned that there will be three or four exhibitions rotated through per year. The space will be available for private functions such as weddings. On the bottom floor there is also a substantial classroom for the educational functions.
Much of the objective of the gallery space will be dedicated to opening up some of the works from the permanent collection highlighting Color, Pattern, Whimsy, and Scale. The whole building will become the center of a new education program for school children under the title of “Passport to Learning.” Innovative gallery workshops are planned with exercises that reinforce what they are learning in the school classrooms. There will be sustained educational lectures series on art, history, and culture with two or three taking place per month. Family programs are planned for the weekends. Because the new building will allow the opening of the museum’s collections, they intend to publish a new book on the collection in conjunction with the new building. Finally look for film series in the auditorium.
The New Year of 2014 will see an exhibition of sculpture made up of nails by a Mainer artist in the upper hall. In the lower hall will be an exhibit of glass. Then next summer there will be exhibits of paintings and photos from the American wilderness. 2015 may see an exhibition of furniture followed by Modern European art and photography.
The Center for Art and Education is primarily to draw visitors from a distance within a two-hour’s drive. A 2009 economic study found that the museum generates $14 Million revenues per year for the state. The museum is projecting a rise of 25% to this number as the result of its new programs. Special exhibitions are or will be designed to draw in persons from a much larger catchment area.
The building will cost $7 ½-8 Million. The goal of $14 Million campaign is almost 90% complete and there are hopes to have it completed by opening day. The remaining money will be designated to install a wideband fibrotic system for the entire museum complex and to build an endowment to staff and maintain the building over time.
Definition: Appertaining (to), v. – relating or relevant (to).
Word of the Month: Panjandrum, n. - a powerful personage or pretentious official
(I just picked this up in reading the Economist Magazine and thought it fun.)