BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

First of a Two-Part Series

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY AUG. 8, 2018) — In Adelson and Company’s recent audit of the Berkshire Mausoleum, you find near the end, buried under a lot of previous numbers and verbiage, the following sentence:

“In 2015, the Berkshire Museum Board of Trustees and leadership staff began a Master Plan process to outline a strategy to address [its various] programmatic, financial, demographic, and competitive challenges.”

Leave it to the paint-drying bores of the bean counters to offer one of the most revealing sentences ever to be penned about the BM since its descent into the maelstrom of selling out to the highest bidder. The Mausoleum trustees revealed the plan, unimaginatively called New Vision, in July 2017. The plan, as it turned out, was nothing more than a planned sale of the institution’s most valuable works of art as a means of salvaging a ten-year run of disastrous management that led to nearly $12 million of debt.

Look closely at the sentence, notably, the “[various] programmatic, financial, demographic, and competitive challenges.” Back in the day, THE PLANET wrote our share of corporate communications, including annual reports. When such a document uses the word “challenge,” it refers to “problem.” In the Mausoleum’s case, the four areas of “challenge” indicate that these problems were self-induced. That is often the case when an organization’s “leadership staff” proves to be as incompetent as the BM’s. Let’s break down these Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:

Programmatic Challenges — It means the Mausoleum’s offerings have, in the words of Leonard Pinth Garnell, “really sucked” — a decade of out-of-touch programming that the public largely avoided. In the preceding 10 years, the “leadership staff” denuded the adult and secular nature of the museum’s art and natural history collections in favor of the neon-speed Chuck-E-Cheese approach. It destroyed the once-awe-inspiring first-floor great room, with its curtained gem booth, stuffed rattlesnake, and eagle, and put in its place a giant sandbox, where out-of-control kids could have the run. Do we have to draw you a map?

Financial Challenges — This speaks for itself. The bad programming decisions led to a drop in paid attendance and also shook the confidence of supporters and would-be donors. In true Pittsfield style, however, the “leadership staff” kept up the spending spree, including hitting up city taxpayers for upkeep, debt be damned.

Demographic Challenges — This euphemism attempts to gloss over the gap between what the BM offered and what the museum-going public expected. With its management crisis, the BM lost its identity and its following. It lost sight of its target audience, adults, and went for the least-common-denominator, kids. The theory was: “Get the kids and you get the adults.” In practice, though, this mistake got the museum a lot of non-paying visits from schools, day-cares, and other such hordes. What works for impulse buying at the supermarket checkout doesn’t work for a museum.

Competitive Challenges — The BM was (and is) getting its butt kicked by other venues — Tanglewood, The Rockwell Museum, MCLA, Jacob’s Pillow, and the like. Once the Memorial Day-to-Labor Day rush passed, all it got were the leftovers. The same will happen this September, as well.

When you add it all up, the audit checked the math but ignored the methods. That may be good enough to keep the Trustee skunks able to endure their smell, but for the rest of, the redolent can only be endured with a clothespin clamping the nose.

Next issue: THE PLANET names the names and crunches the numbers.

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“Jeweled raindrops moisten my tongue / The drink of kings gets me drunk” — Sir Tiberius Fruitjuice.

”OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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