Bellevue Arts Museum Is Struggling Again

Will BAM be able to bring shows like this anymore? This Givenchy gown by Alexander McQueen was featured in the recent exhibition Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair. Courtesy of BAM

Eleven years after Bellevue Arts Museum was reborn in a previous crisis, it’s in upheaval again.

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In memos to supporters and docents, the museum is asking for money and describing “difficult decisions” to come.

Stefano Catalani, its former Director of Art, Craft, & Design, who had been at the museum for 11 years and led successful exhibitions that drew critical and audience appreciation, left a month ago for another job in Seattle.

His second-in-command, Curator of Craft Jennifer Navva Milliken, resigned last week for undisclosed reasons.

This week two more people on staff resigned, and at least one major donor couple, longtime supporters Norma and Leonard Klorfine, backed away from the museum recently.

In memos sent to docents and supporters in July and this month, BAM Executive Director Linda Pawson referred to the museum’s goal of “reducing costs that are not directly tied to producing results” and “looking at every line item.”

“I am not unconcerned,” Pawson told me in a phone conversation Thursday. “I think BAM has a lot of challenges. I think we have our eyes open. I think we are looking at ways to address all of them.”

Catalani, who is now Executive Director at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, and Navva Milliken declined to comment for this story.

Reached by phone, Norma Klorfine confirmed that after serving on BAM’s board for 12 years until a couple months ago, and giving public gifts up to $500,000 as recently as 2015, she and her husband are no longer supporting BAM.

She declined to say why, only that “A lot of us worked very hard to build that back up.”

Michael Monroe, the former director of the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian in D.C., was also one of the major forces in rebuilding BAM. He became Director of BAM in 2005, Director Emeritus in 2010, and he, too, declined to comment for this story.

Pawson said the museum’s first concern is hiring a new Director of Art, Craft, & Design.

“I would expect the job to be listed in the next several weeks,” she said.

But “we have not determined if the positions will be filled exactly as they have been stated in the past,” Pawson said.

The Curator of Craft position may not survive the cuts. Pawson wouldn’t say whether a replacement would be hired in Navva Milliken’s role.

BAM’s programming, balancing art, craft, and design locally, regionally, and nationally, has been ambitious and broad within its field in the last decade.

BAM has mounted solo surveys for important artists including Dan Webb and Patti Warashina. Historical shows have ranged from African American fashion through the 20th century to Louis Kahn's architectural designs to art and craft made by Japanese Americans imprisoned in internment camps.

BAM grew out of the Bellevue summer arts and crafts fair, which the museum still runs, and which just had its 70th year. It hasn’t been easy to turn a suburban crafts fair into a full-blown art, craft, and design museum, and BAM is unusual in that it does not have a permanent collection, meaning it does not have storage and conservation costs, but also meaning that it has to bring in all of the art, and that donors have to be persuaded by the exhibitions and the management, not simply by the fact that a lot of art in the basement is at stake in the survival of the institution.

But after a rocky start as a contemporary art and education center when it moved into its new building by architect Steven Holl—a willful building easily blamed for everything that was wrong with BAM, despite more intractable difficulties with the Eastside institution’s identity and philanthropy—BAM went on to become artistically unique, creative, and surprising.

Under Monroe, Catalani, and Navva Milliken (who joined the staff two years ago), BAM carved a niche and occupied it beautifully.

Management and finances have struggled far more.

Tax returns going back to 2008 show only one year (2009) in which BAM’s income covered its expenses. Instead, expenses commonly exceeded income by several hundred thousand dollars.

Pawson said the 2015 tax forms are not yet finalized but she expects a loss of about $300,000. She said the museum does not have debt and owns its building.

Pawson said that by the first of November, she hopes to announce immediate help in the form of two matching gifts by two different donors, whose names she didn’t share because negotiations are still underway.

She said one is a $2.5 million matching gift to endow “curatorial excellence” into the future. The other is $1 million receivable only if the museum can raise double it, or $2 million, first.

In the last three years since Pawson became ED, she said, BAM has had three different development, or fundraising, directors. She said it’s a difficult job, and that “BAM is quite frankly a challenging organization.”

One of the staffers who resigned this week was one of three in the fundraising department.

BAM will be hiring more fundraisers, Pawson said. Pawson and the board of trustees are also responsible for fundraising.

Pawson herself is one of three EDs that BAM has burned through in six years. Pawson transitioned into becoming director from the BAM board.

First, she was interim director and then named permanent ED by the board. She is a business person with no prior experience running museums.

A consultant hired by the City of Bellevue has produced a plan to assist BAM. In the eight weeks spent with the consultant recently, everything was on the table, from board governance to exhibition quality.

“The first thing we settled was, did we still believe that the mission was appropriate for us?” Pawson said. “And the absolute answer was yes. No question, it addresses a unique place in the Northwest in art, craft, and design.”

In this time of austerity, which changes will visitors notice?

Shows may be curated by local guest curators in the short-term, Pawson said. The art will be more local, too.

“We will be looking at local and regional artists, collectors, and traveling shows, to reduce our expenses related to show fees or shipping costs,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that we are going to lose any of the quality of the exhibitions. We’re just looking at things that will be less expensive to ship across the country or that have significant fees tied to them.”

Pawson mentioned some good immediate news. Thanks to a donor, she said the exterior of the building is getting a new paint job and repairs to cracks.

BAM is seeking more support from Bellevue businesses, she said, and reaching out to the local hotels under construction to let them know to send their guests and executives to BAM to visit and for meetings and events. Major donors now include Susan and Lonnie Edelheit, the Kemper Freeman family, and GLY Construction, Pawson said.

After the current biennial exhibition, a show of sculpture by Al Farrow opens in December and will be up for several months. More exhibitions based on work begun by Catalani and Navva Milliken will be announced “within the next two weeks,” Pawson said.

“We are not going to sit around and be victims to anything,” she said.