Bob Archibald’s leadership of the Missouri History Museum was cut short by an outcry over a some financial numbers – the steep price the museum paid in 2006 for a parcel of land on Delmar Boulevard, his salary as museum president and the value in vacation time he has accrued according to the terms of his contract. This outcry was fueled by incessant media coverage and dubious attacks from some members of the Zoo-Museum District. A months-long Post-Dispatch news and opinion series on Archibald (matched in lockstep with criticisms led by two of Mayor Slay’s appointees to the museum district, Charles Valier and Gloria Wessels) made alarmist claims about Archibald based on these numbers. And it was finally a number that made Archibald resign a year before the end of his contract – the $10 million in museum district funds that vindictive critics of Archibald claimed were suddenly in danger. Archibald, as he told us, “fell on the sword” rather than attempt to steer the museum through a public funding battle in his current beleaguered state.
We think Bob Archibald’s tenure in St. Louis should be remembered and measured by an entirely different and much more impressive set of numbers. We think his value to the museum and St. Louis is made clear when we compare the museum’s numbers in 1988, when Archibald arrived, to its numbers in 2012, when the Post, Wessels et. al. drove him to resign.
The earliest attendance records available are from 1991, when the museum had 142,416 visitors. The 2012 attendance (as of December 23) was 377,797, for a bump of nearly a quarter of a million people per year. In 1988 the museum had slightly under 2,000 members; in 2012 Archibald left it with some 8,500 members, more than four times as many as when he found it. The museum grew in membership and attendance because Archibald expanded and improved programming, including making it radically more accessible to African Americans, a majority of the city’s population for most of his tenure. The American Association of Museums recognized this expanded and improved programming by giving the museum its first accreditation in 1993. The Institute of Museum and Library Services – the primary source of federal funding for museums – then gave its first-ever National Award for Museum Services to the museum in 1994.
Archibald worked tirelessly and was effective in seeking private funding for the museum in addition to the taxpayer subsidy provided to the museum through the museum district. The museum endowment’s value on Dec 31, 1988 was almost $4.8 million; its value on November 30, 2012 was $24.1 million, a bump of almost $20 million on Archibald’s watch. In 1988 Archibald inherited museum assets of nearly $5 million; he leaves assets of nearly $72 million, a gain of $67 million. Clearly, if the Post et. al. were correct in attacking Archibald relentlessly for poor management of museum funds, there is an extra $20 million in endowment and $67 million in assets that he raised and created that must be explained away.
The growth in assets reflects Archibald’s successful acquisition and improvement of facilities. Under his visionary leadership, the Missouri Historical Society purchased the former United Hebrew Congregation in 1989 and renovated the historic facility into a state-of-the-art library, reading room and conservation facility that opened to the public December 1991. In 2000, after eight years of planning and a $20 million capital campaign, Archibald opened a transformed Missouri History Museum, quadrupling the space available for exhibitions and community programming.
Despite this impressive track record for investing in off-site facilities, Archibald was attacked by the Post et. al. like a common thief for approving an above-market purchase for a parcel of land to build a new cultural center. That project failed – like countless other capital campaigns and development proposals – when the economy imploded in 2007, a year after the parcel was purchased. Yet the Post et. al. were willing to flush down the toilet a museum president and community leader with this documented record for improving his institution. They maintain that his tenure should be measured by one dubious board-approved land deal (and a board-approved contract that rewarded Archibald commensurate with his high level of performance).
We grant that the Post uncovered governance issues at the museum board level that need to be addressed. But, on balance, this community got a great return on our investment in Bob Archibald. Shame on those who ran him out of town in this way, and what a loss for us.
