3 min read April 2024 — In an interview with Invest:, Emily Ballew Neff, director of the San Antonio Museum of Art, discussed the institution’s achievements under the previous strategic plan, the forthcoming goals and the museum’s exciting prospects for the future.
Can you share the goals achieved in the past strategic plan and goals for the next?
I’m excited that we will commence strategic planning this spring and look forward to sharing updates after we’ve moved through the process. We’ve hit our targets in the last revised plan, which bodes well for how our staff, Board and community work in concert to advance the San Antonio Museum of Art specifically and lift the arts throughout the state and region more broadly. Given that our permanent collection and programs are unique in San Antonio for their global reach, emphasizing the role of the art museum in cultural and international diplomacy, especially in the areas of Latin American art, art of the ancient Mediterranean, and Asian art, will be areas of focus and refinement.
How does your team plan and choose new exhibits for the museum?
Deciding on which exhibits to feature is a critical part of our planning. We strive for a balanced exhibition schedule, ensuring there’s something for everyone within a year’s time, whether through programs or exhibitions. The process begins with our highly experienced and educated curatorial staff, but it also includes a layer of community engagement. For example, we recently selected a major collection in the spring titled The Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection from the Worcester Art Museum, a show that seems right for San Antonio, with its strong military presence. This stunning exhibition will showcase advancements in armor design from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, also looping in our Japanese art collection, which includes samurai objects. We will also borrow items to explore samurai culture in-depth and relate the theme to contemporary artists working with arms and armor, adding a modern twist. We take a 360 degree approach to making great art relevant and accessible to enthusiasts and newcomers alike.
What is your ideal way for local government to distribute arts and culture funding?
It is wonderful to see so many private/public partnerships in San Antonio. Despite the generosity of our government agencies, we still need stronger support to ensure sustainability and to foster new growth. Currently, the arts are significantly underfunded by the public sector. That said in San Antonio, our government officials well – recognize the importance of the arts in economic development and revitalization, visual literacy, workforce development (the arts sector supports a great number of jobs), tourism, community building and pride, general wellness, and that is before you count the sheer joy, pleasure, sense of awe and wonder that visitors experience in an art museum. I look forward to seeing greater public investment in the arts, which is so crucial to the overall ecosystem of a healthy city.
What are the major challenges facing the arts, culture and entertainment sector in San Antonio?
We are still recovering from the pandemic and have yet to reach our pre-pandemic attendance numbers, despite gaining great momentum. Our cultural leaders in San Antonio meet regularly and I’m confident we are all on the right path. I believe a “steady state” will be achievable this year.It will take all of us: the public and private sector, community determination, and good, old-fashioned hard work, to fully achieve the potential of delivering great art experiences to our community and region.
What is the museum’s future direction and what excites you about it?
We have potential and opportunity; you can sense it just by looking at our exceptional building with its giant neon ‘P’ and ‘O’ shining brightly. Joking aside, recently, we had a small gap in our exhibition schedule, which was too short for a full art show but too long to leave empty. So, we collaborated with 14 local organizations, embracing our history of historic preservation and adaptive reuse. We’re the only accredited art museum in the U.S. situated in a repurposed brewery, a fantastic example of 19th-century industrial architecture. When the New York Times reviewed our museum in 1981, they even had to explain to readers what “adaptive reuse” meant.
We’re proud pioneers in investing in the now-thriving Midtown area and in repurposing old structures for new uses. Recently, CPS conveyed an additional acre of land, expanding our campus to 11.5 acres and providing three points of access to the San Antonio River. This acquisition allows us to reimagine our future and consider the potential of our existing structures, some of which haven’t yet been repurposed.
While we need renovations and refurbishments for our current buildings, we’re excited about starting anew and reimagining our possibilities. This summer, we took the first steps by launching a project to gather community feedback and raise awareness of our role in historic preservation and adaptive reuse. We don’t have a predefined vision for our future; instead, we believe in a process that involves conversations at various government levels, community engagement sessions and working with experts to help us realize our full potential and determine the best use for our buildings.
For more information, please visit:
