fundrasing

Fundraising

Kitty Dubreuil's Exhibit Journal Fall '96

September 26, 1996: Bill Fitzhugh, David, and I have just returned from New York City from a fundraising trip. Every one was excited about our project and I think we will eventually receive funding. Money is getting very tight again. Part of the problem is Smithsonian's wonderful reputation which turns out to be the proverbial double edged sword. On one hand, being a Smithsonian project brings with it instant creditability, and on the other hand funding is difficult because almost everyone believes that either Smithsonian has a large ongoing funding base, or that Smithsonian can always get funding. Unfortunately neither is true.

October 2, 1996: Good news! British Airways is generously providing three round trip tickets to Japan for Bill, David, and myself, and two round trip tickets from Japan to Washington DC for two Japanese scholars on Ainu culture. Bill must go to Tokyo for three days at the end of October to present the project to the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs. David and I will leave October 28 for six weeks. We will travel first to Osaka for curatorial consultation with professor Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka, Japan's top Ainu ethnologist. We will also see the Ainu material at the National Museum of Ethnology. We will then go to Hokkaido to consult with the Ainu on the progress of the exhibition, and to obtain loan commitments for contemporary art work that we want in the exhibition. This is an extremely important trip as we need not only to make commitments on established work, but we hope to commission work to be made that would then be loaned to the project.

A victim of a “Big Mac” attack, Dave Dubreuil enjoys lunch.
Photo: Kitty Dubreuil.

October 11, 1996: We have had three meetings with the exhibition designers, one meeting with a writer with several follow-up conversations, and one meeting with an illustrator. The goal at this point is to produce an illustrated "brochure" that has descriptive copy that outlines the exhibition. The purpose is two-fold, both equally important. One purpose is to have a presentation piece to give to perspective donors. There is only so much we can do with a strictly oral presentation. When your asking for large sums of money, donors need to see the exhibition concepts on paper. They need to see what they are paying for, and they need to be able to present the visual and written concepts to their funding committees. With all the competition for funding, we need to get them excited about our project. All funding sources have a great many more funding requests than there's money for, and a brochure is part of the overall strategy.

The second purpose is to keep us grounded in reality. One part of the brochure is a floor plan more or less to scale. There is only so much material that can fit into the allocated space, at this point, 6500 square feet. We saw right away that we will either have to have more space, or cut back on what we want in the exhibition. The problem with planning for more space is that most of the museums, the venues that we want to exhibit in, do not have large display areas. While we have some very hard choices ahead of us, at least we are moving ahead.

- Chisato (Kitty) Dubreuil, Ainu Exhibit Project Coordinator

Continue: The trip to Japan

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