If the Brooklyn Museum of Art were in any other city but New York, it would have no problem attracting members and visitors with its world-class collections of Egyptology and the Impressionists, notes the new vice director of development Peter Trippi. However, the museum staff hopes that a mailing scheduled to go out around Labor Day will accomplish just that.
The 150,000-piece mailing is for the Sensation exhibition, featuring work by young British artists. At London’s Royal Academy of Arts last year the show attracted 500,000 people, mostly young. It was “quite a tattooed and pierced crowd,” Trippi notes.
Hoping to reach a similar audience in the United States, the museum targeted subscribers to magazines like Bomb, Interview and Wallpaper. The projected response rate is 1%.
The long-term goals are to double membership over the next year and make the membership younger and more diverse. Currently, the Brooklyn Museum has 11,000 accounts – memberships that can be individual, dual or family. The Association of Art Museum Directors estimates that there are 2.3 members per account, which Trippi guesses would bring the membership up to 25,000.
However, people signing up to become members to get free tickets to a hot museum exhibition are notorious among directors of development for not renewing. Trippi hopes that such future shows as the fall 2000 one dedicated to Lee Krasner – Jackson Pollock’s widow, and subject of a movie scheduled for release at that time – will keep the new members coming back. Also scheduled is a benefit for the Department of Decorative Arts, featuring AndrAe Putman.
The Sensation mailing is the largest the Brooklyn Museum has ever launched. Most mailings go to lists culled from visitors to such events as the museum’s First Saturday program – a free evening with music and a cash bar that includes lotteries and a membership booth. Trippi estimates the museum gets 1,000 visitors each First Saturday. New names are added to the house file and are included in such mailings as the Sensation drop.
The Web site, however, has been disappointing in terms of capturing new members. “It’s not interactive enough to do the trick and we don’t have the resources to make it more eye-catching,” Trippi notes ruefully.
While visitors can’t purchase a membership online, as Trippi would like, they are encouraged to pick up the phone and call.
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