In the next 10 weeks, the American Visionary Art Museum must raise $250,000.
Without the money, the gently curving museum at the foot of Federal Hill may not be able to install its next exhibition. Without the money, the fledgling institution will face a decision: go into debt or close.
Fourteen months after opening in its gleaming $7 million building, AVAM -- the museum -- is an unwilling example of how hard it is for a new cultural institution to build a national audience, find allies in the intensely competitive world of nonprofit fund raising and create a clear voice for itself.
But the dire and the seemingly impossible have always been part of this museum's story: It has skated near financial crisis several times -- and has survived.
When it opened in November 1995, the museum had $1.4 million for its annual operating expenses and no debt. Founded to celebrate what is often called "self-taught" or "outsider art," it exhibits works by people who are unschooled and unrecognized in mainstream art circles. The institution is the only one dedicated to such art in this country.
Its opening created a splash, drawing international news media attention as well as more than 60,000 visitors in its first year. Already, Los Angeles city planners have expressed interest in opening a West Coast branch.
But the museum finds itself an outsider in cultural circles, in ways that go beyond its art. There are no full-time curators on staff and no dues-paying members. And unlike longer-established institutions, it remains very much the product a single person, its founder and director, Rebecca Hoffberger.
Depending upon who is talking, Hoffberger is either brilliant or brazen. At 16, she left high school in Pikesville to study mime in Paris, and she went on to study medicine in Mexico. In 1985, when she was development director for an outlet of Sinai Hospital, the idea for the museum came to her.
No one
denies that for more than a decade, Hoffberger, 44, has worked with intensity and single-minded devotion to raise the money and political support necessary to transform her idea into reality. Or that she has an absolute faith in her vision -- and an uncanny ability to convince others that they see it, too.
Many museum professionals are reticent when asked for opinions of AVAM; but some express admiration for Hoffberger. "There is a widespread opinion of Rebecca as a visionary, and I respect the fact that she has approached the building of an institution without any preconceived ideas," says Gerard C. Wertkin, director of New York's American Folk Art Museum. "It's a difficult way to build an institution."
In Baltimore, some members of the arts community grumble privately that when Hoffberger proposed founding AVAM, she promised that it would not depend upon local resources for survival but would look elsewhere for support.
She argues the museum is doing just that: "We are having to create a whole new stream of support."
Bare-bones staff
But as AVAM begins its second year, Hoffberger and her bare-bones staff are discovering how difficult the care and feeding of a museum can be. The operating budget has been streamlined to $1.3 million, and Hoffberger, who takes no salary, is having to work flat out.
She needs to raise $250,000 by April so the museum can open its third exhibition, "The End is Near! Apocalyptic and Post-Millennium Visions of Century 21." In addition, Hoffberger wants to raise $10 million over five years to add to the museum's tiny $11,000 endowment. "I want to stabilize the museum and to really make it strong," she says.
That's a tall order. In the Baltimore arts community, $10 million is a very large sum. It's about 30 percent more than the operating budget of the Baltimore Museum of Art, and double that of Center Stage. In an era of decreasing government support and increasing competition for corporate money, keeping any cultural institution afloat is a challenge. At AVAM, it's a race against time.
And until AVAM is on firm financial ground, Hoffberger cannot complete the delicate weaning process that will allow it -- the product of one woman's drive and imagination -- to grow into a mature institution.
'Great power in not knowing'
Like the artists they champion, this is a museum and a founder who refuse to play by the rules. Visitors are offered funky orange-and-blue brochures that declare: "There is great power in not knowing what will or won't work; of not being marinated in lessons of the tried and true."
Hoffberger's goal is to build a museum with a national reputation. She envisions an inclusive environment, a place that welcomes artists who are largely uninfluenced by the art establishment as well as members of the public who typically are disinclined to visit museums. "I love a museum that is meaningful to the art cognoscenti," she says. "But above all, I love the idea of one that embraces people who normally would never go to see a museum."
