Wisconsin Public Television	University Place		Wisconsin Academy Fellow:	Kathy Kelsey Foley		4/27/14	UP5771  cc [APPLAUSE]  >> I was trained as an art historian, and perhaps you know the joke about our type. Art historians are so dependent on images projected in darkened rooms that we fall asleep when the lights go on. [LAUGHTER] With that in mind, I'll do my best in this brief time to stay awake and to shed light on what fuels my passion for the visual arts and museums. Let's start with the basic functions of a museum, specifically an art museum: to collect, preserve, exhibit, and interpret. Although these four actions might sound dry, they provide the basis, the underpinnings for my interests, work, and passion. What I'm driven to do is to use collections, exhibitions, and a wide array of programs to break down barriers and chance perceptions, misconceptions really, about art museums. Cyrus Yawkey, Wausau lumberman, early 20th century venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and the father of Leigh Yawkey Woodson believed in the need to cultivate a love for beauty in art. In turn, Leigh Yawkey Woodson's three daughters, who established the art museum to honor their mother, wanted to enhance the lives of others as they had benefited from the arts. What a noble, heartfelt, and embraceable goal creating access to the visual arts in north central Wisconsin. And so my number one hot button: access. 

How do we break down barriers and work to change perceptions? No admission fee is one way. Thanks to an endowment created by the museum's founding families, the Woodson Art Museum is committed to free admission. The concept of free admission has recently received a good deal of press coverage. Perhaps you've read about the successful experiment with free admission underway at the Dallas Museum of Art, or the commitment made by the city of Baltimore just a few years ago to underwrite free admission at both the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum. These are big cities and big museums and these innovations, so to speak, are recent. The Woodson Art Museum opened in September 1976 with a commitment to free admission for all. That was innovative and daring. Also, a pragmatic way to break down barriers to exploring the visual arts. Today, access takes on another entirely expanded meaning. Forty years ago, museums undertook little public programming. 

Curators organized, installed exhibitions. Educators trained docents who offered lecture-style guided tours. Public programming access is now at the core of all that we do to enhance public engagement with the collection and with exhibitions. We fully subscribe to the proven methodology that hands-on learning is among the most powerful tools. Tell me, I forget; show me, I may be interested; but let me try it myself, and I get it. To this end, and much to my delight and personal engagement, the Woodson Art Museum has created model programs that have received national recognition and spanned life's stages and passages. From Art Babies, for pre-walkers, to Spark for older adults with memory loss, and something for just about every interest and age in between. A lot to be proud of and all designed to promote access and eliminate barriers. Next, advocacy and support for the arts. Not unlike the absence of museum programming years ago, advocacy for museums and the arts wasn't on our radar screens until relatively recently. 

In fact, museums tend to consider this unsavory work and mistakenly assume that decision makers at the local, state, and federal levels would do right by museums. We all know this hasn't been the case. In fact, if you're not at the table and at the ready to speak up for what you believe in and what you're passionate about, your issues and needs fall through the cracks. Making the strong case for museums, the arts, and the multifaceted ways that both support education and enhance the quality of life in Wisconsin's communities, large and small, is something I'm committed to. If we don't tell our own stories, and passionately so, the important work of museums will not be heard. We are a culture of storytellers. To put another way, stories stir our imaginations and pack and emotional punch, and museums can be both repositories and igniters of powerful experiences that become shared stories. [APPLAUSE]