Charting the Future, 2018–2020

ArtRise worked with the Art Museum Marketing Association (AMMA), an organization of executive-level marketing professionals from the largest art museums in North America (those with annual budgets of $10 million or more), to develop a leadership succession plan and collaboratively orchestrate the transition process.

Twelve years ago, a small group of arts leaders, including ArtRise Principal Marnie Burke de Guzman (then Director of Marketing and Audience Strategy at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), founded AMMA as a forum focused on topics of concern to marketing leaders of major art museums. In 2019, ArtRise Projects undertook an effort to envision the future of the organization in partnership with fellow AMMA co-founder Janet Meredith (previously Senior Director of Marketing, Audience Development and Government Relations at the Denver Art Museum). Working with the AMMA Steering Committee, Burke de Guzman and Meredith developed a governance structure, financial policies, and a brand approach to formalize AMMA’s identity and structure. In addition, the future-planning process included the articulation of a leadership succession plan and the evaluation of potential programmatic offerings beyond the organization’s signature annual conference.

Findings and recommendations were approved by the AMMA Steering Committee in May 2019 and a two-year leadership transition began thereafter. In response to the cancellation of the annual meeting of the American Alliance of Museums, and the necessity to develop new modes of convening in the months following the Covid-19 shutdown, the new leadership team led AMMA’s first virtual conference in May 2020, as well as a topical monthly series of online programs to follow.