Authors: Luca Giustiniano, Sara Lombardi
Abstract:May 2020: Taking her traditional seat at the board’s table in the glass-casted room, Ann Hailstrom, Director of the St. Vincent Art Museum, looked extremely worried. On the table, thick books on Leonardo anticipated the plan for the next exhibition. Since her appointment as the Director, she had worked hard to make the St. Vincent Art Museum an excellent and faultless expression of high quality. Nonetheless, the totally unpredictable spread of COVID-19 had called off the entire year’s program. The severe uncertainty that the museum was facing was putting its survival at huge risk. While sitting, Ann knew that the board members expected her to come up with valuable ideas for prompt adoption to face the crisis that the pandemic was creating for the museum. Many questions were crowding her mind: “How can we be resilient in the face of the consequences of the virus? How can we keep on developing our activities yet preserve the high level of quality of our intellectual offer? What can we learn from these challenges to remain competitive? How can we incorporate the lessons learned into our strategy to compete better in the future with other cultural institutions in Europe? As soon as COVID-19 is over, how can we increase the attractiveness of the St. Vincent Art Museum to the international markets?” While reflecting, she also wanted to show the board how much effort she had put into looking at this tremendous moment as an opportunity to renovate the museum and some of its procedures and its ways of dealing with customers as well as its work activities. Waiting for all the members to join the meeting, from the other side of the room, the Grand Palace seemed to observe her with austerity.
