Museums Are Telling Stories That Need to be Told

We need a new word for “museum” which calls to mind blank white walls with paintings created by old white men depicting gorgeous scenes of beautiful ladies sitting waterside with flowers and picnics.  Don’t get me wrong, these are pleasing images and I love looking at them.  But it turns out their interest and subjects leave out about 90% of the population in the world.

The world has changed.  The arts are a reflection of our society and our cultural mores. And baby, “the times they are a changin”. In response, museums are listening to the outcry.  The modern audience is new, fresh, young, black, brown, yellow, LBGTQ, female, elder, street-wise, colorful!  They want to hear about music, history, life-experience, and feeling they understand, both within (or without) the walls of our institutions.

While museums are normally thought of as staid and conservative,  our most progressive institutions, those that have realized they must change or perish, are singing a new song.  They are changing the location, experience, design, subject, and setting.  They are ENGAGING new audiences.

Last week’s New York Times offered two sections on Museums.  “More to see, do and feel -Museums are striving to expand the experiences of their visitors.”   Rock on, I say.  Some examples:

Christopher Wool decided that because galleries are so staid and expected, he would show his famous and very expensive sculptures in a raw industrial space within an office building in Manhattan.  He says in an interview that “Imperfection is the goal.  You get tension with imperfection and small amounts of chaos in these pieces, which is strengthened by how unfinished and raw the space is.”

All over the United States from San Francisco, Charleston, Oklahoma City,  Little Rock, and Philadelphia, new museums are exploring outdoor spaces as an integral part of the experience.  They are creating welcoming, collaborative spaces, where guests feel inspired and also engulfed by beauty.  Landscaping and sculptures, street furniture, water, wind  are  melded together to form an alchemy of stories in these outdoor spaces, which are not gardens, by any stretch of the imagination. 

In North Miami, the story of Haiti’s troubled history and a personal story of Manuel Mathleu, the exhibition’s creator, is told through paintings and ceramics, many of which depict violence and tumult. 

At the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, industrial history  is the subject of a huge exhibition, as part of the Forum Series.  The exhibition, a collaboration with Maria Watt and The Poetry Collection utilizes glass, steel and blankets as the materials of her creations

In this tumultuous time of political, racial and ethnic polarization and violence,  college protests have become a real campus issue.  In the spirit of encouraging calm and empathetic behavior, ten college museums  are collaborating on one simple activity voting. Sculptures at the University of Oregon in Eugene provide a deep dive into the false depiction of society in a Norman Rockwell painting. 

Mental illness s the subject of a new exhibition at the Mississippi of Art through a display of “What Became of Dr. Smith, a 122-foot long painting of Noal Saterstrom exploring is great-grandfather’s 40-year travails in the Mississippi State Insane Hospital.  Among other things, he explores his own battles with depression and depersonalization.

This fresh and sometimes disturbing new museum content and form expand human understanding and connection through art, in a time when the world is anything but peaceful.  Perhaps this should be the mission of all museums, in hopes that someday soon, it will no longer be so desperately needed. 

As I wrote these words, I discovered that these types of new and thoughtful attractions have always formed the basis of my practice.  Our body of work includes museums of motion pictures, television arts and sciences, Native American stories, Negro League Baseball, young female empowerment and carousels, to name just a few.  I just never thought about it in that way.  JB Research Company has always worked on projects for the 90%!

10 Steps to Avoid Chapter 7 and 11

How do you fix the post-Covid world?  How do you make people happy and delighted after four years of unprecedented sickness, cultural shifts, economic uncertainties, isolation, and loss of control?  The majority of our engagements these days ask for the roadmap to successful projects, those that will fix or avoid Chapter 7 and 11.

A whole long while ago, I wrote an article with my mentor, Buzz Price, about the many failures of certain themed restaurants and attractions.  I recently looked it over and was very surprised to see that it still has relevance for development of new attractions today, post Covid., Thus, I thought I would refresh our memories because these are still very true.  Here are 10 ways to avoid bankruptcy when planning a new retail, dining, entertainment or cultural attraction.

1. When planning, balance revenue generation in the major categories: attractions, food service and merchandise.
2. Spend time computing capacity.  Indoor attractions are hard to justify because of constrained capacity.
3. Attractions are driven by opportune locations, preferably in the path of major attendance generators.  Stadium crowds at sporting events may not provide the required flow because of game-day surges.
4. High front-end R&D costs incurred in anticipation of a fast rollout are a plague.
5. Study the market and understand the nuances of its preferences.  Pick your niches carefully and stick to them throughout planning and operation.  Don’t try to change consumer behavior.  The devil is in the details.
6. Keeps your eyes wide open and try to be objective about your passion project.  You may think you have invented the next internet, but your market may not.  On the other hand, be enthusiastic about the project and its greatest cheerleader.  Keep a balance between your passion and market-driven objectivity.
7. Narrowly concepted attractions won’t find a broad-based market.  Along those lines, clear and concise branding is key.  Make sure your brand message is clear to your customer.
8. Assure that you have a critical mass of attractions to generate visitor interest for the required length of stay. 
9. Use realistic assumptions when looking to the future.  Respect comparative and competitive performance.  If you do better than projected, you can fix the problem (in most, but not all cases).
10. The attraction must start up fully formed.  Phase I needs to be a complete show. Undercapitalized projects have a high failure rate.  Create realistic models for development cost, revenue and expense.

All in all, whether pre-COVID or Post-COVID, whether decades ago or today, the rules still apply.  Please tell us about your new projects, what new rules you’ve discovered and how you’re doing in the post-Covid environment.

When, Where and How We Are Normalizing

The Pandemic began in March 2020, just two weeks after my fourth grandchild was born. I had just returned from New York for Fashion Week, a watershed moment in my life, something I’ve always wanted to do! That’s how I remember it. And now, almost 40 months later, how has our business changed? Is there anything normal about our entertainment and retail worlds?

 

Let’s talk about the movies, the one thing everyone has in common in terms of entertainment. Theater grosses are down 40% from 2019, as are ticket prices, adjusted for inflation. Our movie product is uninspired, with just a few extraordinary stories, and they all won Academy Awards. As a matter of fact, I got the closest I ever will to the Academy Awards this year, by attending a very glittery and glamorous party at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures:

In the latest Morning Consult report on what we feel comfortable doing, 77% of adults said they were OK now to go to the cinema. But the latest Fox News Poll said that 60% of U.S. adults felt that Covid had changed their lives forever. Wisdom says, “only time will tell”.

 Have all retail sales converted to digital? Are shopping centers dead? In fact, the percent of retail done online increased from 10% to 15% during the pandemic and have normalized now at just below 15%.

So what about total retail sales? Well, in fact, these have also grown (net of car sale and gasoline sales)?

 

As you can see, retail sales in real dollars, not adjusted for inflation, grew 8.7% annually between 2019 and projected 2023, even during the pandemic years. But adjusted for inflation, real growth has been 4.1%, still somewhat remarkable given what we’ve been through. Of course, government subsidies help out quite a bit. 

I am a data nerd. I get all warm and excited when the census is released every 10 years. I looked at retail sales for the past four years and some fascinating things jumped out. GAFO sales, which includes most things sold in shopping centers, declined by 3%, which is not adjusted for inflation. Furniture, fixtures and equipment went up for three years, then decline significantly, probably due to the fact that people were out again. Food and Beverage stores, which include alcohol, grew by 17%, even after people could get out in 2020. Clothing declined significantly, down by 30%. Did people start buying more alcohol instead of business clothes, or any clothes for that matter? Did we give more attention to making our homes our staycataion palaces?

 

It is a very interesting phenomenon that when we have an “Act of God” experience that depresses our economy, it normally takes at least 5 years to get back to zero. In the case of Covid, its anyone’s guess.

In summary, the news is mixed, some disappointing, some hopeful. I am an optimist.  I think we’ll be back to where we started by 2025. 

What’s your experience been?  How’s your business faring?  Write us and let us know how you have experienced the pandemic and what you see for the future.

Losing My Paper Babies

Today I did something I have never done before, and I will never do again.  I have been procrastinating doing this for a long time. It seemed odious and frightening to me, and if I didn’t do it, no one would notice, die, be hurt or be sad.

Nonetheless, I did it this morning.

I trashed my whole body of work, more than 30 years of consulting, contained in more than 375 reports, all done to the best of my ability and always with care, meticulous research and anxiety.  These were my babies, birthed with an insecurity most don’t understand.  No matter how good my previous study was or how much praise I was given, I always felt I was starting over with each new assignment.  Yes, complete impostor syndrome!  Never resolved…

My library of work was a literal library, sitting proudly on shelves in my office.  Anyone who walked into my office could see the results of the past 30 years of my professional life.  As time went on and the body of past work became more prolific, I needed to box up some and put them on shelves in the garage.  But I always kept the most current ones, perhaps those from the past 36 months close to my chair and close to my heart.  I could pluck one off the shelf any time I wanted!

About 10 years ago the magic of digitization happened and my prized body of work became an icon in a folder that when clicked, disclosed the craziness of technology.  Presto, the fruit of my effort materialized on a screen.  I could store them, send them to clients, keep them in a new kind of library…a digital library!  Those that weren’t able to be digitized were painstakingly scanned by my fabulous assistant Erica who didn’t mind doing it.  (It would have driven me mad!)

I was very scared that I would miss something, or that the cloud would burst, or that the internet would break!  Especially knowing that the “cloud” is really a huge roomful of very heavy computers that could be taken out by the Russians any time they wanted (which didn’t help my anxiety).  I liken it to a fire that, incidentally, could also have engulfed my paper reports and wiped out my entire body of work.

I asked my adult kids and I asked my assistant, “Do I need these anymore?” only to be answered with a resounding chorus of “No!”  So it was decided.  I had to throw out my babies!  But first I needed to understand if all the reports had a corresponding PDF icon in my digitized library.  Not so easy to do, since there were 375 reports to check and four versions of the library databases, three of them in excel and one a list of the digitized PDF reports.  It took 4 weeks to do and involved Erica’s and Charley’s help.

That task completed, I decided again (with my husband’s help) which jobs were special enough to keep as “mementos,” which were my most important assignments, and which got developed into now beautiful, successful, thriving, operating projects.  My adult babies!  There were about fifteen of these, so we made a list and pulled the paper copies.  But then I looked over my excel list and saw so many more that were memorable, and I expanded the list.  I now have about fifty reports I want to keep in their physical format.  I found most of them but had a few left to find.

Easy peasy, but not so fast…

This morning came.  The handyman was coming at 11 to fix a few things and to haul off the boxes of reports I was taking to be shredded and donated to the dump.  I furiously began looking through boxes to find the last few I had not found before.  Yet as I was doing this, I could not believe what I discovered.  My body of work, my 40 years in the business, is very impressive.  It was the first step in the development of some pretty imaginative, ground-breaking, singular kind of entertainment, cultural and retail real estate developments.  80,000 hours of work, give or take, and I had something to show for the effort!  (This of course harkens back to my fundamental insecurity, and my constant feeling that I’m only as good as my last job.)

When I first had kids, I had a sort of overall goal – that I raise children who would make the world a better place than when they emerged.  But going through my reports today, and throwing out some of my paper babies, I discovered I too have made the world a better place… and I am damn proud of it!

Pups of Pups

The past two years have challenged us all. With too much time on my hands, I asked myself everyday, what can I do to keep busy, to keep from going crazy? With a momentous 2020, four grandkids (two fairly new grandkids born, both premature) a husband with some medical challenges, a changing personal and professional landscape, I was just moved to write: this time some music and some songs. They are streaming now, out in the world!

With much effort, two years of work, lots of help from my guitar teacher/collaborator Nick Simmons, and two voice teachers, here is the result:

Album by Jill Bensley

If you took the time to listen to Pups of Pups I am eternally grateful. It is with much humility and trepidation that I have put these out to the world. In the coming weeks, I will write the story of how this came about, the failures, the triumphs, the tears the laughter and the joy of creating and loving and being myself!

Retail Trends for 2022 and Beyond

As the Christmas shopping season continues and New Year’s is not far behind, our thoughts turn to the what’s next.  What is the future of retail?  The question is still on everyone’s mind and no one has answered it adequately.  That’s because we are not fortunetellers, but we try very hard to predict the future, in spite of our shortcomings.

This week I listened to a podcast from Dana Telsey, a retail expert I greatly admire.  She always says things that I think, “Gee, I wish I had said that, and so eloquently.”  She talked about the three Ps in understanding and predicting change in the retail marketplace:

1. Process
2. Purpose
3. Profit

I keep thinking about these words and continue to develop insights that are essential for an understanding of the future of retail.  Try it. Just think about the words and the application to your particular product, location, experience or store.  You will find you are a brilliant prognosticator!

Just for fun, I came up with my own “10 Trends for Retail” that are practical and may help you plan.  They are as follows:

1. Consolidations, bankruptcies and other market adjustments will continue until retail product, market supply and demand are equalized.  They are good for the industry as a whole, however painful they may be for affected entities.  The U.S. had too much unproductive space before the pandemic.
2. E-commerce and omni-channel selling of goods and services will continue.  These formats work hand in hand with stores.  They supply avenues to sell more goods!  In this realm, the consumer is king.  They have spoken loudly about their preference for convenience and choice. Things like BOPIS, curbside pickup, warehousing and other trends will continue because they are popular and help sell.
3. Retail THEATER and EXPERENTIAL RETAIL will drive successful locations.  It is time we stopped being lazy about our shopping experiences.
4. Great locations will continue to thrive.  A-mall location will evolve into even more mixed-use destinations.
5. The opportunity for development and deepening of our outdoor/lifestyle formats has never been stronger. We must recognize and acknowledge the essential change in post-pandemic behavior.  Consumers require more space indoors and have a preference for being outdoors if possible.
6. Discounters and “Dollar” stores provide the biggest growth opportunity currently.  This is not permanent. These types of retailers always thrive in a recession.  (Yes, we are in a recession!)
7. Cause and purpose are missions to always keep in mind in retail.  Millennials prefer products that offer some good to the world.
8. “Value” is another concept to understand and build into your mission.  It does not mean cheap; it means giving the consumer something she treasurers as she shops.
9. Exurban and suburban locations supply the best opportunities for growth.  Keep this in mind as you develop and expand.
10. Shifting demographics and the concomitant shifts in Process, Purpose and Profit will drive retail development.

Keep these prognostications in mind as you move along with your day, today and tomorrow.  Here’s hoping they will help you bring joy and success to you!

Are We Ready to be Happy Again?!

Yesterday, I woke up happy.  It was raining and my husband was at work, so I was alone in the morning, as usual.  My room looked the same – pretty gray walls, pictures of family all around, and my beautiful nude painting on the east wall. 

I didn’t notice I was happy right away, and I don’t think anything monumental happened.  I just woke up with a sense of optimism.  I gotta say, it’s been a while since the sun has shone on our world.  And yet in the past few weeks, my world has peeked over the horizon to show a glimmer of normalcy. I think that may have happened with many of you, if I’m reading our situation correctly.

“It’s gonna be OK”, that’s what we’re feeling.  We missed so many things in the past 18 months.  What have we missed the most?  Probably contact and just simple in-person visiting with friends and family.  I’m guessing this is a bit like what solitary confinement feels like, where you get accustomed to a lower level of stimulation, of human interaction.  We are an amazing species.  We are meant to survive, under any and all circumstances.  We are a hopeful breed. We keep on keeping on, today and tomorrow.

Simple pleasures.  Feeling free.  Not caring if a passerby brushes against you.  Leaving the house with no fear.  Smiling at a stranger on the street.  Shopping!!!  Dinner with friends.  Lunch at Neiman Marcus (well, maybe that one’s not so simple!).  And taking Ricky to help out with children and other people who need a lift. 

Ricky at Horse Rescue at the Grove

The holidays are upon us.  The stores are already dressed up for Christmas, all gold and red and green.  They are sparkling and shining and welcoming!  This year, we will have 8 weeks of Christmas, and it couldn’t come at a better time.  The sun is rising over the horizon and the year of the winter solstice may be over. The economy is improving; the jobs report was good this month; Americans are ready to share their generosity at the holidays and the Pandemic seems to be a bit better.  We’re getting back to (the new) normal!

Let us know how you are doing. We always love hearing from you!

 

And the Oscar Goes to………

Yesterday was the experience of a lifetime. I was privileged to attend one of several days of pre-opening of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (AMMP).

But as they say in the movies, here is the backstory.

In 2005, I received a call from the museum coordinator, the only paid employee at the time, to provide a proposal for a feasibility study for a new museum. I had been involved with the feasibility/concept development for the Dolby (Academy) Theater at Hollywood and Highland several years before, so luckily I was on the radar.

When the Academy decided to finally move ahead with the century long museum planning, I got a call. “Can you help us out with the market research and financial feasibility testing of our museum? We don’t know what it is, where it is, or size, but still, can you help us? All we know is that we want it to be the boldest statement ever made on the history and effect of film!” It was the luckiest call of my life!

The director at the time was a brilliant woman, an entertainment business expert and a published fiction writer. She made the job that much more stimulating and creative! We worked with her on many teams hired (many then fired) to provide concept development, site location analysis, market research, and financial feasibility testing.

In all, we did 15 different analyses of multiple sites, configurations, sizes, square footages, models, retail, dining, and ancillary spaces within the museum. First question, “Should it be in Hollywood?” YES of course. You don’t need an expensive consultant to tell you that!

Please note, the museum is not located in Hollywood, because of about a thousand different reasons.

We first looked at the surrounding area of the Academy Library just north of Sunset and Vine, proximate to the Cinerama Dome Theater (closed for now, went out of business). In terms of the macro considerations, and what the world thinks they understand about Hollywood, that is one of the top 5 locations. And for the first five years of this process, that was the site we tested, studied, analyzed, and then amassed the real estate around the site to provide sufficient space for the new museum. This process was ongoing, before we even knew requisite square footage based on market capture, annual attendance, design day attendance and parking needed.

Remember, this is Southern California. No one is going anywhere without their car. It may be changing a bit now because of environmental concerns and traffic, but Angelenos are still in love with their vehicles.

That was the first of many sites studied because of careful planning, management by committee, and economic circumstances, (which included booms and busts, the Bernie Madoff catastrophe with lots of Hollywood money lost), and change in leadership. All in all, the museum cost over $500 million including all the planning efforts, development and hard/soft costs. Not the most expensive museum in the United States, but one of them.

Some of the planning sessions and meetings were lifechanging. I got into an argument with Jon Landis over projected attendance. I got tongue tied in a meeting with Tom Hanks.

One of the earliest concepts, which I believe I came up with in concert with the gentleman who was head of the Hollywood/Highland project, was the “Red Carpet “ or “Oscar” experience, a chance for everyday folks to experience what it is like to walk the red carpet and then win an Oscar. I came from a show business family. I was enamored with the process from the first ceremony I remember watching. It was always an event at my house, with canapés and a hush over the living room when the awards were presented! I always dreamed of going to the Academy Awards.

And my dream came true this week!

 

The Pandemic has made some art more democratic and inclusive. Techology and ingenuity are at work! The following article appeared in Blooloop this week. “Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel immersive exhibition opens in San Antonio”

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition, an immersive art experience, has launched at the Lambermont Estate in San Antonio, Texas.

News

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition is a unique and immersive exhibition that puts visitors inside the most iconic masterpieces of Italian artist Michelangelo.

The exhibit features 34 reproductions of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel paintings, including The Creation of Adam and The Last Judgement. The production company behind the project is SEE Attractions Inc.

Located in the Lambermont Estate, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel covers 9,000 square feet over three storeys. Visitors can tour the historic mansion and discover its secrets, all while viewing Michelangelo’s masterpieces.

“We’ve already done almost all of the major venues worldwide,” Martin Biallas, CEO of SEE Attractions Inc, told the San Antonio magazine.“We know there is a lot of tourism here and wanted to cater to the locals – the tickets went on sale four to five weeks ago and we’ve already sold over 20,000.”

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel is currently running in San Antonio (Texas), Atlanta (Georgia), Charlotte (North Carolina), Chicago (Illinois), Charleston (South Carolina) and San Francisco (California).

“Our aim is to bring you the art Michelangelo created close up,” Biallas added. “The Sistine Chapel gets over 6 million visitors each year. When I visited, I didn’t enjoy the experience in itself.

“That’s how I got this idea. In the Sistine Chapel you aren’t allowed to take any photos at all. Here, you can take as much time and as many pictures as you want.

“We’ve had people pose in front of The Creation of Adam reaching toward each other—that is something you could never do in the Vatican,” he said.

According to the exhibition’s website, organisers used “a special printing technique that emulates the look and feel of the original paintings”. Viewers can see “every detail, every brushstroke and every color of the artist’s 34 frescoes”.

There also are two immersive Van Gogh experiences with very similar names – Immersive Van Gogh and Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience. Last year, Immersive Van Gogh launched the world’s first drive-in art experience, Gogh By Car.

Relocating City Folk Find Nothing to Buy!

We worked on this Amazing project in 2020. What a concept. new homes for growing families at reasonable/affordable prices! And within a commutable distance to the Bay Area.

House Hunters Are Leaving the City, and Builders Can’t Keep Up