Talk from Neil Barclay, Know Thyself: The Importance of Vision in Museum Leadership

As museums grapple with the complexity of a social, political and economic change in the communities they serve, visionary leadership of these institutions becomes critically important.  While there are many approaches to how such leadership is defined and achieved, in its most fundamental terms, it begins with a keen understanding of why an individual has chosen the museum field as their life’s work in the first place. In this talk, Neil Barclay, President and CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, explores the relationship between personal vision and institutional vision and how the two define the most successful leaders working today.

In January of 2019 Neil Barclay was selected to lead the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History as its president and CEO. Prior to that, he served as President and CEO of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in New Orleans for five years.  Barclay also served for seven years as associate director of the Performing Arts Center for the University of Texas at Austin and is the founding president and CEO of Pittsburgh’s August Wilson Center. Additionally, he was instrumental in the historic capital renovation planning for Los Angeles’ Vision Theater, originally built by Howard Hughes and currently in the final stages of development for the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs.

For more information about this event, please contact the U-M Museum Studies Program.

This lecture is organized by the Museum Studies Program and presented with support from UMMA.