Business partnerships help make Dayton Art Institute a world-class museum

When Michael Roediger was a child, his parents fed his creative side by taking him to the Dayton Art Institute.

Years later, he is back at the DAI as its director and CEO, and one of his main tasks is finding ways to draw the most casual art connoisseur to what he calls a “world-class museum.” His goal is to make it even more accessible to the community.

The Dayton Art Institute has brought in an average of 130,000 guests the past five years with 5,678 members in 2014, and Roediger, in his fifth year at his post, believes the future remains bright for the 97-year-old museum.

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“I think first and foremost is our collection,” Roediger said when asked what makes the museum so successful. “We have just under 27,000 objects, and over the last few years we've had experts in that are experts in European, American, Asian and even a silver expert and all of them have independently reported, 'Does Dayton know what they have?' and 'You could never rebuild a collection like this.'

“There are pieces in our collection we probably couldn't afford today or they aren't available on the market. It was a lot of wonderful members of the community … that have really helped us to build the collection through their gifts. And, also there was a time in the '40s and '50s that you could buy art that was much more accessible, and we had really smart curators and directors that helped build the collection.”

The DAI’s collection spans 5,000 years of art history, including important Oceanic art, Asian art, European art, and American fine and decorative art collections.

The biggest challenge for Roediger, however, is making sure the people of Dayton – and surrounding areas – do know what they have in the museum, which opened in 1919.

DAI ART BALL PHOTOS: 2015 | 2014 | 2013

Roediger said a large portion of the community has shown an appreciation for the museum over the years, but part of what he was charged with when he came on board in the fall of 2011 was making it more accessible and more inclusive to those who don’t already visit the DAI.

“We've made great strides in that,” he said. “Museums are going through a transition in history where there are so many other things going on online and on television and in movies and entertainment that we have to put ourselves out there to say, 'Don't miss the opportunity to experience a work of art that you can only see and really embrace when you are in front of it.’ We've tried to reach out to different communities, which means different ages, cultural backgrounds, religious backgrounds, race backgrounds, sexual orientation,socioeconomic standing -- we look at everyone in our community and try to figure out ways to connect to them.”

Roediger credits his staff, as well as the board of trustees and supporters of the museum for making it what it is today. Marketing “does a great job” of promoting the DAI, and the museum has successfully developed and maintained partnerships with several groups in the community to help bring in funds and provide more accessibility to those who otherwise might not have come through the doors.

One partnership includes The Links Incorporated of Dayton, a long-standing African-American women’s group that does civic work in the community.

“When I came here, I reached out to them and asked 'How can we not only attract more African-Americans, but how can we serve African-American youths more?'” said Roediger, who spent 14 years at the Victoria Theatre Association before joining the staff at the DAI in the fall of 2011. “We formed a partnership with them where they put funding in and helping us do programming with inner city schools. For some of the kids, they said it's the first time they had access to the museum.”

Being the first Dayton native to serve as director, Roediger has the advantage of not only knowing the local community, but also having a lifelong connection to the museum for which he oversees.

Being in a small metro area with fewer Fortune 500 companies than there once were, close connections to the community are especially important for building an audience, he said.

“I think we don't have what a major metropolitan area would have, where we have people coming here as a tourist destination necessarily, so that can be a challenge for us, but we do world-class exhibitions and special exhibitions,and sometimes spreading the word getting people to come to Dayton can be challenging,” Roediger said. “But what we find is once people discover Dayton and the museum, they are hooked. We have people that come from Indiana and Cincinnati and all the surrounding areas and Kentucky to come see our exhibitions, but we have to get them here first.”

DAI OKTOBERFEST PHOTOS: 2015 | 2014| 2013

Events like Oktoberfest have been key in shining light on the museum, while also bringing in additional revenue. A crowd of 27,304 people attended the two-day event in 2014, and the DAI raised more than $407,000 that weekend.

The Dayton Art Institute operates on about a $4.3 million budget and has been a model for other nonprofit organizations in sustaining business and keeping things running smoothly.

“I don't think what we're doing is rocket science, but it's disciplined,” Roediger said. “As a community, it's a civic organization, so I think one of the biggest things we do on a daily basis and an annual basis is say we are going to live within our means, and sometimes that means we make tough decisions but it also means we're also financially sound. We are willing to take risks if the risks pay off, but we also want to make sure we are looking to the future and thinking about what it's going to be for the people here the next hundred years.

“We're constantly looking at how can we broaden our endowment, we're looking at cost savings, how can we continue to look for ways to improve and ways to make our programs mission-driven while also adding to the bottom line and also making sure how to best monetize our biggest events. “

Two years ago, the DAI was awarded from the state capitol budget just under $2.2 million for improvements to the museum’s landmark building, which was completed in 1930 and modeled after the Villa d’Este near Rome and the Villa Farnese at Caprarola in Italy -- both examples of sixteenth century Italian Renaissance architecture.

Visitors will be pleased to see some improvement coming over the course of the year, Roediger said, starting with new flooring in the Shaw Gothic Cloister, which serves as a location for many special events.

The upcoming season for special exhibits also provides some promise for the museum, which is for the first time ever featuring all contemporary art. All three special exhibits this year are tied to the elements of fire, water, air, earth and ether, exploring them through engaging visual experiences that will illuminate the primal, yet shifting, relationships people have with the elements through nature.

“From light installations and interactive video works, to large-scale photography, viewers will be presented with immersive and unique experiences that will ignite the imagination and encourage participation,” marketing and communications director Eric Brockman wrote in a press release.

Roediger said he believes these exhibits are like nothing ever seen before in any Ohio museum.

“The fact there is a whole body over the whole year that is related to the elements,and it's all contemporary is really new for us,” he said. “It's breaking that we have to do something traditional every year, and we're hoping we see big crowds of younger people coming. We’re excited about it.”

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