Two small Massachusetts institutions have been in the news lately with controversial announcements.  As it happens, I have worked with both the Higgins Armory Museum and The Mount and feel a vested interest in them.   Neither has been financially strong for a long time, and now they are in the news for their respective bold solutions.   This blog is devoted to the Higgins.  My next one will discuss The Mount.

The Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester has just announced that it is closing, and giving its collections and endowment to the Worcester Art Museum (WAM).  WAM will dedicate a space to the collections, as well as display objects in other relevant areas of the Museum.  Some staff will also make the transition, as will, presumably, the best of the Higgins’ programming.

The Higgins Armory was founded in the early 1930s by John Woodman Higgins, a local industrialist. Having made his fortune in pressed metals manufacturing, Higgins began to collect items made of metal, particularly arms and armor. Finding his home in danger of being overtaken by suits of armor, he built one of America’s most innovative buildings of its time.  It was the first use of plate glass and metal construction in the US, and is landmarked today.   Inside this small art deco wonder, he built a two-story “Gothic” Hall, in which he displayed his still highly regarded collection.   The Armory, as he called it, was and remains physically attached to his factory building.  Higgins moved his office to the Armory, and there was daily interaction between the old—which served as inspiration—and the new.

Eventually, Higgins died, the factory was ultimately divided into smaller companies, the passageway was closed and the Armory was left on its own with a small endowment, as a 501(c)3. Local citizens stepped up to the board.  The Higgins became a popular place for school visits, family programs, overnights, and the usual varied museum activities.   Like other museums over the past decades, it suffered from decreasing public funding and school visits.  The Higgins was also overshadowed in the local giving community by the better-endowed, pristine, and more traditional Worcester Art Museum (for which I also have worked).  It did not help that the Higgins was located in an unfocused commercial area far from the center of town and surrounded by confusing ribbons of highways.

Despite these challenges, the Higgins remained the only sole-purpose Armory Museum in America.  Over the years at least two larger institutions approached with offers to subsume the collection, but the Higgins resisted despite budget limitations.  In 2007, when I was interim director of the Higgins, the Worcester Art Museum (WAM) informally suggested opening the conversation again. We were interested for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, money was consistently tight.  We had managed to raise funds to replace the roof, redesign and replace the “Medieval” flagpoles and banners for visibility to the highways, replace the failed air conditioning, relight and repaint the interior.  We’d increased programming and revised a children’s play area and small special exhibition gallery.  We’d started e-blasting.  Attendance increased, but not dramatically.  Ditto with donations.   So when WAM suggested considering the potential of a merger, it seemed worth doing just that.   Talks continued over a period of months but ultimately faded.  It was, perhaps, still too radical at the time.

Now, it seems, the time has come. The recent announcement strikes me as extremely positive under the circumstances.   The Higgins collection will remain in Worcester, but won’t be simply absorbed into the collections.   Dedicated gallery space will be created, with the intention of retaining the best parts of the Higgins’ experience for the public.  WAM hopes to retain as many Higgins’ personnel as possible.   What will happen to the Armory building has yet to be determined.

This cannot have been an easy decision, and I salute the board and staff of both institutions.  The Higgins and the Worcester Art Museum are on the cusp of what may well characterize the future of many small American museums.   Whether founded for truly charitable purposes, self-aggrandizement, or wealthy whimsy, there are a plethora of small museums with critical, notable and/or beautiful collections that struggle each year to survive.  Their staffs work hard to educate their publics as to the value in their midst, but even repeat visitors may not (and may not be able to) respond with financial enthusiasm.  Finding ways to join resources, whether by merger, shared management, or shared grounds, will, I believe, become more common over the next decades.

Note:  A good article about the Higgins/WAM agreement can be found in the Worcester Telegram:

http://www.telegram.com/article/20130308/NEWS/303089911/0