The Jersey City Independent "

When Dr. Laurene Buckley started her tenure as Jersey City Museum’s new executive director in early October, the museum was at yet another major crossroads in the institution’s history of financial struggles and changing leadership.

Already facing a decline in corporate donations, residual debt from its 2001 move to a new building and one decrease in municipal funding — all while functioning without a full-time curator on staff — when Buckley took over, the museum has suffered yet another cut in city funding since. These were the facts on the ground, as one might say, as Buckley sat down with JCI recently to talk about the challenges of galvanizing community support behind the museum, as it seeks to both stabilize its financial house and redefine its cultural voice.

She sees two main issues that need to be addressed in order to put the Jersey City Museum back on solid ground. ”Financial is of course first and foremost,” she explains. “It loomed large when I took the job — but I love challenges.”

Taking over a museum burdened by debt and municipal cuts that have now led to a $400,000 budget gap between this and last fiscal years doesn’t allow much time for a new director to ease into her role. Buckley’s last two positions — as the Tyler Art Gallery director at SUNY Oswego and the Castellani Art Museum director at Niagara University — did not require her to fundraise, so returning to an institution responsibility for paying its own way is an adjustment. 

“Coming back to a museum that is supported by the city — well supported — but private in the sense that it’s us [museum staff] who are going out to get the funding is a challenge after having been supported by universities,” she admits.

The Jersey City Museum is also a radical demographic change for Buckely: from students and professors to families and individuals who don’t necessarily have much experience with art or museums — and that’s the second question she sees as essential to address in her first months at the museum. Just how do you engage the community, make them feel welcome and excited about the museum, and still produce content that will attract the press and critics? 

“When I came to the Queens Museum we were doing the same thing as the Brooklyn Museum — trying to get the Manhattanites over, trying to get the critics and reporters over — which … didn’t become the main idea because the Queens museum and Brooklyn were founded for those boroughs.”

Right now the Jersey City Museum is straddling the same abyss, as it faces a decision: Does it focus on programming made for its own diverse population — the hundreds of artists who call the city home and the non-artists who love them — or for critical masses who look largely to New York for innovative museum programming. But the museum is also wresting with the even more fundamental — and entirely unpublicized — question of what exactly it’s going to become.  

The museum is currently a hybrid institution that shows work by emerging local artists in the downstairs “project gallery,” community work in an upstairs hallway, and a mix of contemporary and historical art and history exhibitions throughout the rest of the space. Buckley sees the museum’s actual role as a “history museum/art museum” as the most logical fit simply because Jersey City doesn’t have another institution that houses historical collections — but she’s leaving the discussion open. 

“We’ll see what everybody says. … There are some people extremely opposed to anything historic who want to be on the cusp,” she says. “And then there are those folks who are more moderate and say, ‘For the time being we probably should answer some of the historical responsibilities.’”

The museum has also sent in a draft proposal for developing the landmark Apple Tree House, the colonial building dating back to the 1740s, which Buckley thinks could be the beginnings of a designated history museum.

In the meantime, Buckley reaffirms her commitment contemporary art by continuing to show emerging and established artists in the “project gallery,” for which the museum recently obtained funding for an upcoming series of exhibitions. And she’s doing all this without a curator on staff.

Working with several guest curators isn’t an ideal situation, but it’s how the museum will have to function for the time being.  “We do not currently have it in the budget for a full-time curator, not to say that we won’t as soon as we get back in good health,” she says. 

In the interim, the museum is still working off of exhibitions put together by Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, who served as the museum’s chief curator before moving to El Museo del Barrio in New York several months ago.  Buckley is supplementing those exhibitions with content from other guest curators, but is glad to be able to rely on Aranda-Alvarado’s experience and knowledge of the Jersey City contemporary art scene.  

“She has luckily worked through the following year and even beyond,” Buckley says. ”She has done such a fabulous job keeping up with local artists that I want to keep her on as long as she can manage.”

While “bare bones is probably the word for everything,” Buckley says she believes there are simple ways for the museum to increase its presence in the community and its income-generating opportunities. 

Starting this Friday, Dec. 4, in conjunction with JC Fridays, the museum will kick off a “First Fridays” series of events to be held on the first Friday of “most every month” at the museum. The free events (and free admission), which are being sponsored by Target, will range from theater to public lectures to raffles. This Friday’s kickoff, for example, features a talk on Twitter and other social media, as well as a screening of short films and videos by NJCU alumni. First Fridays aside, the museum is also looking into making better use of the museum’s theater through a potential residency, and expanding educational programming for preschoolers and teens.

“I think our community outreach is going gangbusters with our new education director, Michelle Laughlin, and her crew,” Buckley says. “That can only get better, that can only be expanded.”

Fostering a generation of Jersey City residents who are active museum patrons (and potential donors) is a long-term investment in the museum’s financial well-being, but Buckley is optimistic that even in the depths of this downturn, the tide has begun to turn.  

“At the same time we’re tightening our belts I’m starting to notice a little bit more excitement, a little bit more income-producing,” she says. ”We are increasing our board and I am looking at every opportunity to increase funding.”

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