LY #53 Busman's Holiday

I came up to Portland yesterday to look at art and the "art crowd."

An excess of good spirits kept me from my keyboard last night.

I call this a busman's holiday because I attended a "business" meeting of the members of the Portland Art Museum, 50 minutes of speech-making.  And, you know, I can't turn off my speech professor critical faculties just because I'm out of town and about to go to a party.

According to the agenda handed out at the door, it was the 121st annual meeting of the museum's membership.  I put "business" in quotes because the one piece of actual business completed by us folks in the Whitsell Auditorium was to vote "aye" on the names proposed for the incoming board of trustees.  There were no candidates running in opposition and it was an oral vote.  The outgoing chair of the board, Jim Winkler, put the names on the screen and then asked for both the yeas and naes to be spoken at the same time.  He then said, after many voices in the large room sang out an "ay" sound' that there were more "yaes".

So it wasn't a real vote.  I assume that all the real decision-making was done off stage.

The true purpose of the meeting was to congratulate the board and the members for the great year the museum experienced.   Winkler started the evening with a smoothly delivered, albeit completely "read" speech about all the different exhibits and community members served by the museum, with an emphasis on children.  The kids on the Powerpoint were a nice balance to an audience of grayheads like myself.

The incoming board chair, who had the same name as the auditorium, was not a fluent speaker.  He got caught in a loop around the thought that we should communicate with him and that he was in favor of communication.  He looked down at his paper three times, saying "oh no" then looked back at the audience.  He reminded me of some of my more nervous student speakers.

The third speaker, a younger man whose name escapes me, gave a solid financial overview with simple pie charts showing where the museum's operating expenses came from and how member had grown the last year with 15,118 members renewing and 2532 new members.

The best part of the meeting was an Oregon Public Broadcasting produced short about a truly creative fundraising event in which invited member paid $500 each to attend an event where seven of the curators pitched particular works of art as the possible next purchase by the museum.  It was a fascinating exhibition of public speaking prowess at work, edited, of course, for television so we only heard bits and pieces of the persuasive speeches given for the different works.

Portland Art Museum

After the meeting there was a member's party with Japanese food, Oregon wine and beer, and demonstrations of martial arts.  The galleries were open until nine and members followed docents around to hear about the samurai armor and other current and permanent exhibits.

And, as I learned to finish up such stories when I worked at the El Gato newspaper in high school, "A delicious meal was served and a delightful time was had by all."