0.9 Chapter seven: retrenchment and the struggle for survival, 19  (Page 15/20)

Ross and winokur at the helm

The events of May 5 consolidated power in the hands of new leadership, but that did not mean that the Society was now prepared to return to anything remotely resembling normal operating activity. The Society did not have a full-time chief executive. The new arrangement was still very much an interim solution. The galleries remained closed, and the library was open just three days a week. The government appropriation, though an important endorsement of the Society's value, was just one of several interdependent elements of the advisory committee's recommendations. The Society still had to generate $35 million in endowment through deaccessioning and real estate development. It also had to decide how to make the best use of the $10 million capital appropriation. For ex­ample, in addition to repairs, the plan had suggested that the Society restructure space to allow it to eliminate costly outside storage. Determining the best plan for doing that was an extremely important and difficult process that would require input from museum curators, librarians, architects, and administrative staff. Finally, the Society's remaining interface with the public was through the library, which continued to provide services to scholars, historians, and the gen­eral public. Managing that library within tight budgets and with a thin staff was a continuing concern. To make matters even more difficult, Jean Ashton, the director of the library, announced that she was leaving to take a position in the manuscripts library at Columbia University. With Ashton's departure, only Holly Hotchner remained from Debs's leadership team, and in the absence of a full-time CEO, she took over many of the day-to-day responsibilities of managing the Society.

Clearly, a monumental challenge lay ahead, but Ross and the other Society leaders were optimistic that with the public funds secured, the Society could make it on its own, and negotiations regarding an affiliation with the NYPL were dropped. Instead, the Society entered into discussions with New York Univer­sity (NYU) to determine if its library staff would be willing to help manage the Society's library on a contract basis as an alternative to hiring a new library director. Contracting the management of the library to an outside party would allow Society leadership to focus on building the endowment through deaccessioning and real estate development.

At the invitation of Society leaders, Carlton Rochell, dean of NYU's Bobst Library, and his staff began studying the collections, capabilities, and services of the Society's library. During that investigation, Rochell was made aware of strug­gles going on within the Society regarding the stewardship of the library collec­tions and the administrative emphasis being accorded the library relative to the museum. At an Independent Research Libraries Association meeting, Jean Ashton spoke openly to her professional colleagues about her concern for the collec­tions, saying that she had been ordered to clear six stack levels of library materials to make room for storage of museum materials, without plans for whether the library materials were to be sold, deaccessioned, or transferred to another insti­tution. Rochell grew concerned about the prospects for the library and stepped up negotiations with the Society regarding a possible relationship.