Dear friends,
What a glorious Spring we have had! I don’t remember the fragrances from the gardens’ early blooms ever being so intoxicating, but perhaps the joy of the return of Spring, the opening of our new exhibition, and the return of so many visitors to our galleries all combined to make such a special time for your Museum. Thank you for the terrific outpouring of enthusiastic participation in the opening of A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, the 18th presentation of the Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin Memorial Exhibition Series. We were privileged to welcome so many of our local members and partners and so many guests and supporters from across the country. The presence of the exhibition’s artists was especially powerful, and they all seemed quite grateful and moved by seeing the beautiful installation of their work. I am deeply grateful to Ryan N. Dennis, our Chief Curator and CAPE Artistic Director and exhibition co-curator, and to her colleagues for the monumental work required to produce such a transformative exhibition. If you haven’t yet seen it, please don’t wait too long, as you may want to visit multiple times to take in its beauty and complexity.
While we are all thrilled to see the years of planning this exhibition come to fruition, we are also determined to continue learning as we grow. And, we are ultimately committed to remaining accountable to you, our members and supporters, and to our communities, locally and across the state. Thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation, we have built a new data and analytics program that will employ these tools for our performance management and continuous improvement into our practices, systems, and culture with the purpose of increasing impact in pursuit of our mission. Perhaps the most important parts of that sentence are the words impact and mission. The value of using data in this context goes beyond measuring what the Museum is doing. Rather it is to understand how the Museum is impacting its communities and to hold it accountable to its stated goals and values.
In practice this means going beyond the conventional demographic measures and benchmarks against which museums typically assess themselves. As I write, we are collecting that data, while laying the foundation for deeper inquiry into our strategic priorities. We have launched an organizational scorecard to hold us accountable to our stated goals; empowered all employees to collect and use data in their particular positions; developed surveys for staff, the community and other stakeholders to understand our impact and progress; and produced our first ever diversity and inclusion report which is included in this newsletter. We will continue tracking our progress towards our important goals of being reflective of, and relevant to, the people of Mississippi. I hope to see you relaxing in our cool galleries often as the warmth of summer approaches.
All my very best,
Betsy Bradley
Director
View the Fiscal Year 2021 in Review (July 1, 2020 – June 30, 2021)
