Andrew Colabella is a native Westporter, a Staples High School graduate, and a Representative Town Meeting member. He writes:
On Wednesday, the Westport Museum for History & Culture announced that it must raise $750,000 by January or face potentially drastic changes, including selling the historic Bradley Wheeler House, relocating its collections, and significantly reducing operations.
I am not surprised.
The announcement should concern every Westport resident. But the greater concern is not simply the financial shortfall. It is how an institution entrusted with preserving our town’s history arrived at this point.
Before asking the community for another $750,000, the museum owes that same community transparency, accountability, and an explanation of what went wrong.
In 2020, I publicly expressed concerns about the direction of the former Westport Historical Society. I questioned the removal of historic displays, the treatment of longtime donors and volunteers, and the growing practice of charging residents to access their own community’s history.
More than 6 years later, those concerns have not disappeared. They have become increasingly relevant.
The museum’s transformation was accompanied by controversy. The Sheffer family’s name was removed from the main exhibition gallery, despite generations of financial and civic contributions.
Period rooms were eliminated or repurposed. Historic collections were reorganized, and longtime supporters felt increasingly unwelcome.
After the Westport Historical Society became the Westport Museum for History & Culture, questions arose over the fate of the “Miss Liberty” and “Uncle Sam” kinetic sculptures, created by Westport artists Walter and Naiad Einsel. (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
People such as Ann Sheffer, Dorothy Curran, Morley Boyd, Miggs Burroughs, Betsy Pollak, John Suggs, Joanne Woodward, Bill Scheffler and countless others represent something money cannot replace: institutional knowledge, volunteerism, community relationships, and historical continuity.
These individuals and families helped build, support and preserve the institution long before its rebranding.
You cannot alienate the people who helped build an institution, and then express surprise when community support becomes difficult to sustain.
To be fair, the museum has accomplished worthwhile projects, including restoring its historic barn, improving archival management, and expanding educational programming. Those achievements deserve recognition.
But accomplishments do not eliminate the responsibility to demonstrate financial sustainability.
The comments following the “06880” article raise important questions.
Fred Roberts questioned how a $750,000 emergency could emerge with such little public notice. Morley Boyd acknowledged the museum’s improvements while calling for fresh leadership. Ken Stamm described encountering membership requirements when attempting to research historical documents.
These are not unreasonable criticisms. They reflect a fundamental breakdown of confidence between a community institution and some of the people it exists to serve.
And now, with January approaching, residents are being asked to provide an extraordinary amount of money to preserve the museum’s current operating structure.
Three quarters of a million dollars in 80 days? Their problem lies in expenditures. A director’s salary almost doubled in 6 years. The board is just as culpable as the director, to allow such blown out spending to put their mission at risk, history being wiped out and removed, and a town born from the revolutionary war with nothing to show or share.
The Westport Historical Society was a popular spot for educational field trips, to give physical evidentiary proof and exercise to feel, see, and live what and how humanity and society existed in different times. Those rooms are now offices.
For many years, the Jennings Trail guide was available at the Westport Historical Society. Each spring, the WHS sponsored tours of town landmarks for elementary school students.
I believe Westport’s history deserves to be protected. I believe its archives, artifacts, photographs and historic properties must remain accessible to future generations. If donors feel uncomfortable about their artifacts being in the museum’s possession, they have a right to have them back.
The museum would benefit from rebuilding relationships with the families, volunteers, historians and donors who helped sustain it for decades. Preserving the museum and preserving its current management structure are not necessarily the same thing.
Before people donate, the board should provide a complete financial accounting, present a realistic recovery strategy, and engage the community in an open discussion about the institution’s future.
The museum belongs to a historical legacy much larger than any one executive director, board or organizational rebranding. Its mission should be preservation, education, accessibility and public trust.
Choosing between history and demanding accountability from those entrusted with protecting it is not appropriate.
(“06880” Opinion pages are open to all. Email submissions to 06880blog@gmail.com.)
After reading the article, and I must say I’ve never been to the museum, my reaction was how can you trust the present people running the institution? With the track record as described, providing the money requested m, requires a change in leadership.
This one sentence highlights potential anxiety,”If donors feel uncomfortable about their artifacts being in the museum’s possession, they have a right to have them back..” When I donated my aunt’s 1932 Bedford Junior High School Diploma, I took a picture of me, the Diploma and the Director standing on the front porch. After a while I started to feel uncomfortable with the place and asked for it back and I have it now.I then took it to the New Bedford Junior High and wanted to let the school hang it up for a few months so students could view it, but I couldn’t get to see the Principal and the then secretary wasn’t interested, so I just left. And you wonder why I complain a lot? Think about it. 1932 Diploma in a frame and nobody gives a damn.
Thanks very much, Andy. What initially presented itself earlier this week as an extraordinary plea for funds has, with additional information, become a scandal. It would appear that this institution has essentially been looted – from the inside. Trust is a multiplier. But if trust in the Museum’s leadership is at or near zero, the math doesn’t work.
Well said Andy. I think one of lessons is the importance of a solid Board of Directors appointed through an objective committee process with less Executive Director input.
If we look at 3 of the towns most successful non-profits -Westport Library, YMCA, and Levitt Pavilion, all have in place a nominating process, where Board candidates are vetted through committee.
Just letting the Executive Director of any non-profit have autocratic power is a recipe for disaster. All organizations need checks and balances, outside financial audits on a regular basis.
It is still hard to believe the Westport Museum is in such a financial hole in such a short period of time.
Thank you for this. I agree with you. I have felt growing alienation from the WHS for years… such a shame.
The financials for the museum are available online if you look up the form 990 for the Westport Historical Society…the museum’s official name. I’m on the board of a museum in Livermore Falls, Maine, a rural and economically challenged region. I wish we had received the same grant revenue! The issue here is simple financial mismanagement and the museum leadership is responsible for the problem. Westport should have a historic society and museum to display our history but the museum’s current leadership has not demonstrated its ability to lead the effort.
I’m sure I’ll get flack for this. I hate to bring up trump, but this parallels what he is doing in DC- trying to erase historical exhibits he doesn’t like and spending money like there’s no tomorrow. And then lying about it and everything else …hmmmm?
I would like to point out that the Westport Country Playhouse raised a large amount (if my memory serves me right, it was around $2 million) in a short amount of time. I believe major changes were made – those involved will know the details. Where there is a will there is a way. Unfortunately I don’t see the will here- too many people have felt alienated. Change is in the air. I hope the building does not get sold.
Bring back my cousin’s grand daughter who once worked there, and is an enormous history buff. She’s someone who’s really passionate about history—loves reading about it, studying it, discussing it and was once hired there. Bring her in for an interview. Not sure if she’d want to return because she has another job now at a library .
Much like a DNA-testing company’s database of its customers’ genetics becomes just an asset in bankruptcy, so does a private “museum” institution’s historical collection. It would be a shame for Westport’s DNA to simply vanish into the high-bidder’s attic.
Appreciate your drawing this to our collective attention. Whatever went wrong must be rectified, perhaps by a public/private collaborative. Otherwise, what happened in the past will be a stain on the present – and a future, forever loss for the town of Westport.
Easy solution: don’t donate. It’ll force a restructuring. That said, it’s silly to ignore the context here. Folks have had it in for the museum since the change from a historical society because it elected to stop whitewashing Westport’s history, acknowledge the existence of slavery and nonwhite people, and recognize the town’s long history of progressivism. That raised political objections of wokeness from those on the right, and the ire of would-be D.A.R members whose identity is tied up in valorizing distant relatives who were onion farmers here. Then there were naming right squabbles which — while an unfortunate view into the role that ego and cachet play in the charitable world — are hardly unique to this institution. All nonprofit organizations have to find a way to constantly raise money from wealthy people who want their gifts to be publicly recognized.
It does all seem quite mishandled, but let’s not pretend there isn’t an agenda on the other side here. Westport is a vibrant town with an interesting history and should have an engaging institution that represents it well and engages with a broad swath of its residents, not just those who spend too much time on Ancestry dot com or who like seeing their name on a building.
While your points aren’t completely unfair, I respectfully think your conclusions might over-reach.
The Westport Historical Society was a quaint institution, the likes of which you see all over New England. People would go to see a 19th century sampler or the like.
While it may be important that even the less positive aspects of Westport history be preserved somewhere, that was really never the WHS. I never saw their actions as “whitewashing,” but more that they weren’t about “hard” history, but rather about “soft” history.
If a group of people were interested in unearthing “hard” history, it might have been better to start their own organization rather than having a proverbial leveraged takeover of the quaint WHS.
To that end, if one thing has struck me in the debacle that is known as the Westport Museum for History & Culture, it is that people from every place on the political spectrum in our town have spoken out about the mismanagement. Left, right, and center. Ramin Ganeshram has been the most unifying figure in Westport since Paul Newman, but it is unfortunately because her actions at the Museum have been so unpopular.
I hate the term “woke,” but the shift from quaint history museum to museum of wokeness was surely a jarring change to a lot of people – whether they politically aligned with those feelings or not. You better be sure that this is what the public wants, when you make this kind of change. (There must be some parallels between this what happened with the Westport Arts Center and MoCA Westport.)
The director’s public facing demeanor didn’t do the WMHC a lot of favors. Her invocation at an RTM meeting was more about expressing grievances – ironic, because an invocation is meant to bring the group together, not sow discord. I suspect that permanently cost her some public support.
Finally, this place has clearly been mismanaged. Take a look at the financials. And now they just put out a tone-deaf ask for money. There is nothing suggesting that leadership can behave more responsibly. What will they do differently, if they get what they are asking for?
As an aside, thank you to Andrew for the well written opinion piece.
I’m not in support of or opposed to the organization in either form. Few people in Westport or otherwise visited it in either iteration — and that’s not opinion, it’s borne out by the pitiful financials reported on public 990s long predating the board shakeup. I went once (the New Yorker exhibition), which I suspect puts me ahead of 95% of town residents.
So this isn’t an organization that’s terribly relevant to most people. It is and was really just a fiefdom — once for the DAR types, and now for a different cohort. That’s why the outrage seems misplaced to me, and why I think the backstory is relevant. It’s not about “history”, hard or soft, since few consume what the organization puts out; it’s a reaction to perceived “wokeness” and donor naming rights and yes, probably a leader who doesn’t come off well but who also has a name that suggests she’s not a townie. Let’s just be honest about that.
If they are able to raise $750k in 90 days, it’s clear they have a mandate to continue on this path. I don’t see that happening. So change is coming. When it does, I’d love to see this be an organization that is actually engaged with Westport broadly. I see no evidence reverting will do that.
BTW, as someone who is from actual New England (not the tristate area, which is what this is), most of those “quaint” historical societies you describe manage to acknowledge both the good and bad of history.
All pretty fair points.
(Though any perceived “otherness” of the director is likely offset by her having been a reasonably public member of the community. I don’t think any of the initial reaction to her taking over was negative based on bias – but there was more than one person who basically said, “the author? running the Historic Society?”)
I think the big problem – beyond the alienation of the few who pay attention and a name that half of town probably doesn’t recognize – is that they don’t have a mission that many find interesting. The Westport Country Playhouse is something that people interacted with for generations. And while they’ve weathered some storms, people “get” what they’re doing. MoCA/CT has had parallel problems (check out their financials – oof!), but at least (once you get beyond the name) people understand “art museum.”
I agree that this won’t likely succeed. They are like a losing political campaign – contributions don’t slow down, they stop. And between the naming issues and mishandling of some items, even people who like the idea of the place are going to ask, “do I trust them with my money?”
I know the Library hasn’t always benefited from the best PR, but they might be the right organization to pick up some of the assets.?.
If I recall correctly, part of the rationale for the renaming the WHS was to open up opportunities to apply for state and federal grants. While I don’t see the details in the financials, I have a funny feeling that those grants never materialized or maybe were never applied for. I’d like to be proven wrong. And, even if I am wrong, is that a path we can go down in earnest now to raise some of the needed capital. For me, what the town needs to do is focus on saving this landmark. While John, Jimmy and Morely have nailed key issues that must be considered going forward, we need to put the finger pointing aside (no matter how well deserved it may be) and focus on keeping this critical part of our town’s history alive.
This whole situation is a really disappointing. Of course Westport should have a thriving Historical museum. Do the WHS Board members have any explanation of how their participation resulted in this financial disaster? A first principle of serving on a Board absolutely is “diligence and scrutiny “of the financials. Being on a non profit boards should not merely a reward for be a place for folks who gave some money. The primary role of a BOD is to ensure a sustainability for the entity. Before we raise money can someone from the Board simply tell us what’s about to change, and why it will be sustainable going forward. Raising more money may not be the only answer. How about a take over by an alternative organization that has a solid track record. One suggestion may be the Library but there may be others.
I very much appreciate Andy’s thoughtful note. Transparency and accountability are essential and no money should be given until a detailed plan to ensure the longevity of this important and beloved institution is presented. My questions, is how do we, Wesporters help ensure this institutions continuity and success…
I haven’t gone in there since the museum changed the name of the Sheffer/Sheffler space, and fired some amazing and dedicated workers.
Andrew…well said!!! This situation is a deja view of the Westport Playhouse debacle. Why/How are the people charged(and paid) to preserve & protect these two historically important places allowed to run them into bankruptcy??
I hesitated to respond because although I am a native Westport resident I am no longer a resident. I changed my mind! It was before Covid that I tried to donate a family treasure and was turned away by the person who greeted me. One look at the cover of the item and the answer was we aren’t interested. It was “The Connecticut Cookbook” published by The Westport Women’s Club in 1942. It included recipes from many Westport residents but also people like Clare Boothe Luce. It had many illustrations by Westport artists and some interesting articles by some of Westport’s well-known residents, not just recipes. Thanks to 06880 I learned about Mr. Dorr and his invention of the white stripe on the right sides of the road. Nell Dorr contributed many of the recipes and was the person who did the cover. I contacted the Dorr foundation, and they were delighted to have the book and it has been sent to them. They have been very gracious to me. So! Thank you 06880 for helping me preserve the book and educating me. Thankfully I did not try to donate my mother’s Staples announcement of the 50th Graduating class or her diploma. My dad also graduated from Staples but his diploma wasn’t saved.
The former Historical Society was a delightful place! You could drop in and enjoy the always informative and entertaining exhibits at your own pace. And the gifts on offer were wonderful, informative and reasonably priced. It was my secret source of gifts! There were special exhibitions and concerts. I was very disappointed when it closed up in that form.
Attendance at all museums is down throughout this country post COVID. Sell it to the town and put Westport Recreation in there, freeing up their current building for a grand pro shop!!
Make it a bowling alley. God knows we need one around here!
One does wonder how the current financial situation came to be. Has there been no oversight? This is a small very local museum in a small town. I have worked in non-profits and nobody I ever knew there drew a directors salary such as this and neither did I. Non-profits are precisely that, and they are not (or ought not to be) profitable but rather, very well and carefully run indeed.
That is how WHS was. The concerts were wonderful and so were the special exhibits. When hunting for just the right, and unique, gift I always found it there. WHS was an interesting welcoming place. We always took visitors there. Many years ago I volunteered there but eventually had to give it up due to illness in the family; by the time I could have resumed volunteering, WHS change had occurred. I stopped by to welcome new staff and was ignored by management. I distinctly remember asking some questions; just curious, that’s all. Answer from new management was essentially “yeah, sure…” said in a tone with a sigh, clearly suggesting “whatever…” I returned a few times thereafter but the warmth and enthusiastic historical spirit had dissipated, or so it seemed. I hope that the enthusiasm of what was WHS can return from whatever this current iteration is. We are an historic town, after all.
What happened to the carefully researched, historically appropriate, full kitchen generously donated by General Electric (A then Fairfield corporation) ?
I’m not from Westport, or even from Connecticut. I work with historical societies up in Mass and this story caught my eye.
I don’t buy the argument that executive compensation and employee salaries are looting this place. Checking the form 990s over the museum’s history, salaries/compensation make up the lowest share of the museum’s expenses since 2017. Their liabilities are half of what they were in 2017. It looks like they really did put most of that $3mil they raised into upgrades to the building. Revenue from gifts has varied a lot since 2017, but the general trend is down. FY24 contributions were their lowest since FY13.
I chatted with a colleague who serves on 2 non-profit boards in Boston. We suspect they unknowingly lowballed their fundraising goals in previous years and are now dealing with the repercussions.
It’s no secret that grant opportunities for FY26 and FY27 are lower, more competitive and rarer than they were just a few years ago. I don’t know a single historical society, even my tiny one, that isn’t scrambling for local grants now. If there’s a grant they once relied on that they didn’t get this year, a press release would probably mention that, if it wasn’t brought up at a membership meeting or in a newsletter.
How much of the drop in gifts is due to lack of trust? Burned bridges? “The economy?” The public’s lack of awareness of this issue? You would know better than me. I doubt they can raise $10k per day by January, but I hope I’m wrong.
When the History Museum operated as the Westport Historical Society, we had a 10 member Board of Directors and each one had a history with the organization and a role to play in its operations: treasurer, membership, development, exhibits, fundraising events, etc. We also had a 15 member Advisory Council made up of our community partners to be consulted as needed. The Executive Director was hired by the Board and reported to the Board. I think this is how a typical non for profit operates which ensured fiscal responsibility and sustainability. In order for the Museum to operate going forward, I think they need to return to this level of Board oversight. I was active with WHS for 25 years as a volunteer, board member and board president.