55. Jill Wagar – Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art – Leading a New Era of Community

August 23, 2021 Robert Wagner, CPA, Advisory Partner

Jill Wagar

Jill Wagar is currently the Deputy Director of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, a nonprofit public charity founded by Alice Walton, opened its doors in November of 2011. Jill has been a staff member since Crystal Bridges’ inception. Her initial role at the museum was Director of Development, followed by Chief Strategy Officer.

 In this episode, Jill discusses the three main principles Crystal Bridges has implemented to usher in a new era of community: inclusion, diversity, and anti-racism. These principles strongly support the museum’s mission to build a community centered around acceptance and belonging.

Additionally, Jill shares her strategies on fundraising and gives insight on how to engage with potential donors. The museum is currently undergoing an expansion of their building by 50 percent that includes additional art galleries and educational spaces for visitors to enjoy.

This episode is now on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen via the podcast player embedded above.

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INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Robert Wagner:

Our guest today is Jill Wagar. Jill is the Deputy Director of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art located in Bentonville, Arkansas. Jill has been with Crystal Bridges since just before its opening in 2011 when she joined as Director of Development. Before becoming Deputy Director of the museum in October 2020, she was the Chief Strategy Officer. Jill is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and earned a degree in marketing and public relations from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. She also the Certified Fundraising Executive Accreditation. Jill, welcome to the How That Happened podcast.

Jill Wagar:

Thank you, Robert. I'm glad to be here.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah, so excited for you to be here and I know the museum is coming up on its 10th anniversary, which is a very exciting time. You've also opened the... Is it The Momentary, it's called?

Jill Wagar:

Yes. Yes.

Robert Wagner:

So a lot of things going on at the museum and we want to focus... Our podcast is about business success and innovation, and so most of our listeners, like myself for sure, we enjoy the art, we enjoy attending and experiencing the museum and all the things that are in it, but we don't really know what happens to make all of those experiences happen for us. So I really want to dig into that with you and find out what it takes to run an organization like Crystal Bridges. So again, very exciting to have your insights here. So as I mentioned in the opening on your bio, you were the Chief Strategy Officer in your role before the Deputy Director role, so what is the strategy of Crystal Bridges?

Jill Wagar:

Thank you, that's a great question. Of course, when you ask a Chief Strategy Officer about the strategies for an institution, we are ready to talk about our strategic priorities and so we are aligned going forward. Before I really speak about that, I just do want to say how wonderful it is to be 10 years into the Crystal Bridges journey. November 11th we do celebrate our 10th anniversary and as you mentioned, The Momentary for guests who don't know, in 2020 just three weeks before the pandemic really hit our community we opened a satellite location to Crystal Bridges. It's just about a mile away and it is a contemporary space for performing arts, visual arts, culinary arts, music festivals and such. So it's really wonderful to be able to be expanding our footprint in that way already.

Jill Wagar:

And I think especially the time of the pandemic really helped us even focus even more narrowly on what our strategies are and also opening The Momentary. I can down some quick priorities with you, if you'd like me to.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah, that'd be great.

Jill Wagar:

Okay. First and foremost, I think Crystal Bridges and The Momentary want to become community centered and what that really means is making sure that we are a place for social connecting and for belonging, where people feel like they belong here and that they're comfortable. For us to be able to do that it means working both inside our walls and also outside of our walls in our community. So we have a Community Engagement Team that is going to northwest Arkansas communities, and even a little bit outside of that northwest Arkansas circle, if you will. And going into communities and co-creating programming with them and it really starts with that whole idea of we believe that art has a power to be able to heal, and inspire, and motivate, and help people feel that wherever they are in life, and we want to be able to lean into that in working with communities that maybe don't typically come to the museum.

Jill Wagar:

And then of course, we have such a focus on school visits as part of that community centered approach. We have students who come to the museum, about 50,000 a year, and then we also are working in schools across... Well, actually across the state and even in some of the surrounding states. So being community centered is really important. Tagging onto that as a second priority, we're looking at inclusion and belonging from a diversity perspective. Crystal Bridges and The Momentary have gone onto say and just in this recent year that we want to become an anti-racist institution. And so Robert, a lot of people ask, and you may, is really kind of what that difference between diversity, inclusion, belonging, and then anti-racism. Inclusion and belonging is really about... It's more passive. It's about how you feel about how you interact with other people that you're inclusive of them. But being anti-racist actually means that you're taking action to be able to create change.

Jill Wagar:

And so Crystal Bridges we feel like we are an inclusive and welcoming place, but we don't want to stop there. We want to be able to take more action, to be able to reiterate the importance of this in our community and in our nation. So we're looking at making sure we have diverse staff at all levels of our organization from the board all the way down to our frontline staff and to our volunteers, and also focusing on our guests. We want to make sure that we are attracting guests to the museum that are representative of the demographics in our community and we have some work to do. And there can be a lot of barriers in that area that we're learning about and want to make sure we're doing what we can, and a lot of that is through different exhibitions and programs that can share marginalized voices and marginalized narratives. So if you've been to Crystal Bridges lately, you may have seen some of that.

Jill Wagar:

We want to be people centered for our staff, and so we want a staff that's engaged, supported, and empowered. Quite frankly Robert, we want to be employer of choice not just in our region, but in the nation for museum professionals that we're bringing in from across the nation. And then Robert, you may have heard we're already expanding Crystal Bridges. We have just recently announced that we are increasing our building by 50%, adding additional galleries and education spaces, and it's really important for us to do that while making sure that the guest experience is not diluted, that it's still a very strong guest experience even through construction and then of course when we're finished being built.

Jill Wagar:

We are a must visit destination and we want to continue to grow that positive brand awareness nationally, internationally even. And then while we're doing all of that we do have a responsibility to maximize our revenue and our operational efficiencies. Earned and contributed revenue streams are very important to us and I know you want to ask me about that contributed revenue stream.

Robert Wagner:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jill Wagar:

And then we want to make sure that we're sustainable in all of our practices, especially in the areas of energy and waste.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah.

Jill Wagar:

That's a mouthful, but those are the strategic priorities of our institution and the direction in which we're going.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Those are some big ideas. I mean, those are some really big ideas and very cool as well. So let's... I do want to touch back on the diversity and inclusion piece.

Jill Wagar:

Yes.

Robert Wagner:

The anti-racist piece. And to your point, you mentioned several facets of that, but maybe just thinking about the guest profile. I mean, has that been a challenge? Just traditionally, maybe not just at Crystal Bridges, but for museums in general, has having a diverse guest community has that been a challenge for museums over the years?

Jill Wagar:

Yes. I would say absolutely in our industry and although there are of course exceptions and things happening all across the country, typically the traditional museum guest is typically white, more affluent from a socioeconomic standpoint with education and income, and also skews to be an older patron, especially those who travel across the country. And so it's really important for us to be relevant to everyone and we have done some studies here at the museum, especially with the Latinx community located in northwest Arkansas, and have learned some barriers to coming to the museum. We just recently have translated all of our gallery labels in Spanish to be able to assist them to be able to have conversation with multi-generations in the galleries.

Jill Wagar:

And we also know that if someone hasn't been to a museum before they feel like there's a set of rules that they need to know before they come. They feel as though they need to know how to dress, how to behave, how to act, or even what to do when you come. There's questions like can we talk in the galleries? Do you have to be hushed in the galleries like you do in a library? No, is the answer. Crystal Bridges tries to take a approach that we sometimes call a drop shoulder approach. Arthur Cohen, in some of his work, he's a national researcher, coined that phrase and we want individuals to come into our space feeling comfortable, feeling like it relates to them, it's relevant to lives, and they see other people who look like them.

Robert Wagner:

Very good. Yeah, it's an interesting insight in that because I think of the artist community as being very diverse and has been diverse for a long time. But you're...

Jill Wagar:

Yes.

Robert Wagner:

It does strike a chord to think about the guest community and I hadn't even thought there's a paradigm, I guess, about what it means to visit a museum and how to act.

Jill Wagar:

Right.

Robert Wagner:

I hadn't even thought about those kind of things. Very good.

Jill Wagar:

Yes, and so part of our thought when we're going out into communities and working with them we don't want to be the big museum coming into a community telling them what they need to know or what they should do. We actually want to have a conversation and listen with them and co-create experiences, programs with them that happen within their community, with artists from their community. And that's really important. We believe that individuals can have an outstanding art experience not at the museum. If they choose to come to the museum at a later time, we would love to have them, but experiencing art no matter where it is, is important.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Okay again, you had a lot of big ideas there in the strategy and looking at the website I did see the plans for expansion, which is always very exciting and that always brings energy to any organization when you're expanding the physical footprint, so that's very exciting as well. Let's kind of continue on the strategy theme though and one of the things that it says in your bio and in your roles is sort of aligning that strategic plan with philanthropic resources, both nationally and internationally. I'm just wondering again, I have no basis of experience in this world, what does that mean to align those things? And I guess the follow up is, if I think about someone who's a philanthropist in another part of America or another part of the world, what's their interest in doing something in middle America?

Jill Wagar:

Those are great questions and ones that we talk about all the time. Really to be able to fully accomplish our strategic plan we have to ensure that we have the financial resources to be able to do it. Crystal Bridges was established as a nonprofit public charity for those listeners who may not be as familiar with the museum, we were founded by the Walton family, specifically Alice Walton who's the only daughter of Sam and Helen Walton who founded Walmart. Alice and her family specifically established Crystal Bridges as a public charity and if we get into IRS rules, and I'll make this really general, you could probably talk more about this Robert if you ever wanted to, but as a public charity in an oversimplified explanation you must have at least one third of your funding come from, for us, non-Walton related entities.

Jill Wagar:

So the family can only provide two thirds of our funding and the Walton family established us that way because they knew for Crystal Bridges to be successful for generations and generations to come well into the future that it would be most successful if it were embraced by a large community, both locally and nationally. And one way to really foster that investment of feeling like this is your museum is the way that individuals and foundations will invest philanthropically in the work that we're doing. We have this responsibility to fundraise at the same pace as our ambition. We're continuing to grow and we have lots of opportunities. Most philanthropists in our region and in our nation, as you were asking about, do support Crystal Bridges and The Momentary. They also have a home museum in that place where they live that they support and we know it's important for them to continue their local support of their museum, but many have found a special interest and connection to the work at Crystal Bridges or The Momentary that advances their philanthropic interests.

Jill Wagar:

Crystal Bridges is only 10 years old and we are always creating new and innovative ways of working and presenting programs. We oftentimes say we're only 10 years old we don't have to do the things the way that they've always been done because we haven't always done them.

Robert Wagner:

Right.

Jill Wagar:

So there are times that we're creating this new paradigm and we... Starting a program here or incubating something here has the ability to be able to scale across the country or provide a best practice for other museums to be able to follow and that's really attractive to many of our national donors and they're responding to our ambition, especially that we're initiating them here in the middle of the country outside of the art centers on the coast. So it's a great honor to be able to talk to individuals about our mission and about the work that we're doing and we have let them have the opportunity to respond.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Well, that's very interesting and I think one thing that would appeal is that things are clearly done well at Crystal Bridges and that always helps because in lots of organizations, but the nonprofit world, you just see things that are just way under capitalized. There's way more ambition than there's ever going to be capital to do them. So it's very refreshing, I think, to see something that's done very, very well and it doesn't surprise me that you receive support from a wide range of folks.

Jill Wagar:

Well, and Robert, I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge Alice Walton who is our Board Chair and we have the great honor of working alongside her to be able to help her accomplish her vision that she sees for arts here in the middle part of the country. And Alice is our Board Chair and she's very active in the museum and she has some really fantastic ideas that pushes us forward and then that ambition we were talking about. And it's also... I think about most museums across the country don't have their founder still active in the institution. Many of those institutions are decades or hundreds of years old and their founders are not with them any longer and it's run by volunteer board of directors who are doing really amazing work. We have the opportunity to have our founder still active with us and we want to do really well and we're inspired by her and she's our greatest cheerleader. And so we want to do things well because here we are working alongside her, we have this opportunity to help her envision what this could be in the future.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Well, that's maybe a good segue into just the, this seems like a cold term to use for art, but sort of the supply chain for art and how things come to Crystal Bridges and again, I'm naïve about these things so do we buy things? Do we rent things? Do we lease things? Do things get loaned to us? I have a feeling it's all of the above, but-

Jill Wagar:

Yes.

Robert Wagner:

... talk about that, I guess.

Jill Wagar:

Yeah.

Robert Wagner:

Maybe how do you get this art?

Jill Wagar:

Yeah, so I think you're correct, Robert, D all of the above. So a lot of artists are represented in galleries. Those are located across the country but primarily New York and LA are huge art centers, and Chicago and some other places. Also, of course, we've all heard the terms Christie's Auction House, and Sotheby's Auction House, and Phillips, there's some others, they all have art that they're offering. They are serving as an agent, if you will, for the art or for the artist and there's a movement for art that's historical and there's not a living artist connected with it. You have private collectors who want to sell art and they would offer it to an auction house for the auction house to resell. And the galleries are representing artists and sometimes they may be living and they may not be living that have works in their galleries that then is also for sale.

Jill Wagar:

There's art fairs. There are... Sometimes there's sales from private collectors, so there maybe someone, a private collector, who has a work of art that they think that Crystal Bridges may be interested in and they would call us an offer it to us rather than going through an auction house, that can happen. So yes, we purchase works. There is... Also, we receive gifts of art just as we would receive a donation of financial resources, we receive gifts of art and there's also loans. Crystal Bridges has a passion to be able to make sure that... It's a passion of Alice's is to make sure that art is not the vault. We want as much art out on the walls here or anywhere else being shared by as many people as possible. Art doesn't belong in the vault is what we believe. It only really is relevant if someone's looking at it and so we do loan works of art and works of art are loaned back to us.

Jill Wagar:

When we have traveling exhibitions, the temporary exhibitions that come into place, one of the ones that people talk about a lot is the Norman Rockwell show that we had. Those are leased, if you will. So there'd be an organizing institution that would put together an exhibition and they would offer that show, if you will, that exhibition to two or three other venues and you would pay a loan fee to be able to have that work of art, that group of art come to the institution for three to five months, whatever the terms are.

Robert Wagner:

Gotcha. So what... How far out is the planning on things like that?

Jill Wagar:

Oh, two, three years.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah.

Jill Wagar:

Especially for our traveling exhibitions, it's a really hard process. We have a great Director of Exhibitions and Interpretation here, Robin Groesbeck, who does an amazing job of coordinating that schedule. We oftentimes have a very narrow window. We have a show scheduled three years in advance, we have show before and after kind of a hole in our schedule, and we need to fill something in this middle time, and so oftentimes it's hard to find a show that is available to us during that exact time period. We may have to shift some things around so it's always a puzzle.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Very good. So did the collections start with Mrs. Walton's just private collection? Was she collecting for years and then-

Jill Wagar:

Yeah. Yes, Alice has been collecting for 30, 40 years and she started just collecting watercolors and then her passion for art grew and she started buying other works. When we opened the museum in 2011, I would say about a fourth of the works on the walls were from her personal collection, but the others had been acquired by Crystal Bridges. And so it started kind of as a seed from her collection that has absolutely grown from there.

Robert Wagner:

... Yeah. So is fraud an issue that you have to kind of continuously be wary and do a lot of due diligence around the art that you're acquiring?

Jill Wagar:

We don't hear a lot about fraud in the industry right now, but yes there is a due diligence to make sure that we are buying an authentic work. Right off the bat, buying from a reputable seller is really important because you know that they're doing their due diligence before they would sell it. Each work that we purchase has that provenance that shows the history of the ownership of the painting and that provenance is really important because oftentimes you can see where there's holes in it or see if it seems authentic. Also, we do a lot of inspection of the work under, there's a UV light inspection you can see and you can tell whether it's been painted over, if it's fresh or if there's cracks, and things. And also we turn things over, look at the back of the work, sometimes it's important to take things out of a frame, sometimes you can see the back of what's in a frame. So there are indicators to show its authenticity.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah, interesting. I guess, I thought of the question, well because I'm a CPA and we think of those things, but I know the Green family has struggled with this and I realize there's a big difference between buying ancient antiquities compared to American art.

Jill Wagar:

Sure.

Robert Wagner:

Which is relatively new still.

Jill Wagar:

Agreed.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. So anyway, it's very interesting how the different industries work. So in art, similar to real estate there's a forever record of the ownership, there's supposed to be.

Jill Wagar:

Yes, there is. Well, there should be. Let's say that. There should be.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. So Jill, this interest in art does it ebb and flow? What are the drivers for interest in art and attending the museums?

Jill Wagar:

You mean by guests?

Robert Wagner:

By guests, yes.

Jill Wagar:

Yes. Okay. That's a really good question. I've never considered in that way before, but I would say there are certainly museum goers who come often. We have museum members here or even just community members who use this as almost a daily or weekly resource for them. They like to... The museum does not have an admission fee thanks to an endowment that Walmart established for us early on, so guests can come in and spend as little or as long as they want without maybe feeling like they had to get their money's worth through an admission fee. So there's some people who come very often, but then there's other people who may just come every couple years. We know that there are exhibitions and sometimes we call them gateway exhibitions that they would drive people to the museum that may not typically come. For instance, Normal Rockwell.

Jill Wagar:

For a lot of people we visit with, Norman Rockwell is the only time they've been to the museum, or for the Dale Chihuly exhibition, or maybe Georgia O'Keefe. And so we know those big names are drawing people here, and they come, and then they may not come back again until we have another exhibition that is a draw for them specifically. So I think it varies from person to person. We have been able to maintain a steady attendance and we skip past 2020 when we're looking back because of COVID.

Robert Wagner:

Right.

Jill Wagar:

It was a strange year. If we look back to 2019, we had over 700,000 guests and it's been increasing actually over the last decade. And 700,000 guests is a lot, especially for the size of our community and many, many more than we thought that we would have. And so we still... So thinking about that ebb and flow, some people may be ebbing, but others are flowing and so our attendance is able to maintain, to stay consistent.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Well, a big help to not have an admission fee, right? So then there's just not an economic barrier for folks.

Jill Wagar:

Right.

Robert Wagner:

That's really awesome. So kind of last question about the operations of the museum before I want to ask a few things about your personal experiences, you were talking about guests and there's 700,000 people attending and no matter what you do in an organization you're collecting data about people you come in contact with.

Jill Wagar:

Yeah.

Robert Wagner:

So how is an organization like a museum using the data that you're collecting? And I don't mean from like a privacy standpoint.

Jill Wagar:

Yeah.

Robert Wagner:

I mean to further the organization's mission.

Jill Wagar:

I'm so glad you asked, this is one of my favorite topics. I love data and I actually lead a data strategy team here at the museum. You started with talking about attendance and I think that is probably the most straightforward. Examining our attendance data we can look for zip codes from where guests are coming from, which then in turn helps our marketing team be able to understand where people are coming from and how our advertising and marketing are working in those areas. And so when we have an exhibition that we want to really emphasize regionally that we know where we should be placing those advertisements, so it does inform that. Also, just purely for staffing projections. We have months of the year and days of the week that we're busier than others and where we can use that data to be able to determine our staffing levels. That helps us stay efficient.

Jill Wagar:

Beyond quantitative data, we also look at a lot of qualitative data, especially in an art museum. We're so fortunate to have an Audience Research and Evaluation Team here on site that's led by Juli Goss and they work really hard. They survey our guest to learn demographic information that includes race, and age, and tells us how we're doing on that strategic goal we discussed about reaching a diverse mix of community members. But then it also has some qualitative responses about how they feel their experience has been at the museum, and are they learning anything, do they... Some of those other things that are harder to measure we really try to put a finer point on it. When we're creating exhibitions or programs on topics like indigenous art or works by black artists, when we're expressing a narrative that has been historically and is possibly currently marginalized, it's really important for us to have conversations with community members of those groups where we can just listen, and receive feedback, and make sure that our presentation is authentic.

Jill Wagar:

I said this a couple times before, we want to co-create with rather than creating for, and so those conversations that we have produces qualitative data that's really important for our planning. We've changed the course of some of our work because we had these critical conversations in the community. So we use data in kind of lots of ways and there's so many more, but I won't bore the listeners.

Robert Wagner:

Okay. Yeah. I think it's something that a lot of organizations are just really beginning to tap into and it's a movement. As the big tech companies have taught us, there's a lot you can learn from data so I'm always interested in what organizations are doing.

Jill Wagar:

Oh, so much.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah, so Jill, just maybe turn to a couple of personal experiences that I wanted to ask you about. So you did graduate from Oklahoma State University, so that's awesome. Warms my heart as an OSU grad as well. You got a degree in marketing and public relations. So was this the plan?

Jill Wagar:

No. I wasn't... No, I wouldn't say so, but it makes sense.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah.

Jill Wagar:

I think marketing, if we want to talk about that, is really about strategy, right? I mean, it's thinking about this whole piece of marketing the place, price, product promotion and that's really what I do. Even right now as Deputy Director of the museum, whether it's creating a strategic plan, whether I'm fundraising, examining data, just working with a team on a complex challenge, it is really about that strategy work. And I think the marketing background has really been beneficial in that way and it's incredibly fulfilling.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Well, I want to ask you about something that I think you are probably very good at and you've gotten very comfortable with, but it's probably on people's top three things that they fear in life, after death and public speaking, which is asking people for money. And so you started your career in Bethany, Oklahoma, I believe, and had some early success there again, just reading in your bios. Share some experiences for asking for money like in your early experiences, kind of how you learned to do that, how it felt, how you-

Jill Wagar:

Sure.

Robert Wagner:

... kind of conquered that.

Jill Wagar:

Yeah. Yes, I did. I started my career working at the Children's Center, which is a pediatric hospital in Bethany, Oklahoma, as you say, it was my first job out of college. I think I... There's very few people who plan to be a fundraiser, I'll say that.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah.

Jill Wagar:

It just happens to... It feels like it's something that someone falls into. I think it's rare that, that was literally my first job out of college was getting to work in fundraising. At that time, I was there with a team and most of my time there as a novice was working on special events that were fundraisers, and also doing grant writing, and writing proposals for foundations. It was less about the face to face major gift ask, if you will, but it grows. I mean, I think having really great mentors and models, to watch the way in which that works very successfully and then as you continue to write things on paper it becomes more natural then to be able to say those words out loud, if you will.

Robert Wagner:

Okay.

Jill Wagar:

And also, in special events you're asking for sponsorships for special events and so you're asking for usually modest amounts of sponsorship support for events. And I think those were some of the best practices that I had that really led me into that space. It was... I worked at that children's hospital for 10 years and about halfway through or so I became that Director of Development, so I was the lead there and started to make those asks in person. And it certainly becomes more comfortable over time, I've been doing it for over 25 years now and it gets more second nature.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. So give some advice here, I guess, for folks in the audience who are executive directors, or they're the fundraising chair, or something like that and they need to have kind of a breakthrough around asking, and getting, and achieving some large gifts, relative to their organization of course. Not everyone's running an organization the size of Crystal Bridges. So what tips would you have for folks in that role?

Jill Wagar:

Yeah. That's a good question, one that I'm actually asked fairly often. I would say first create relationships with donors and potential donors. I mean, really it's all about relationships. Don't consider the work as a transaction, you give me this and I'll give you that, but rather as you're helping donors being able to achieve their philanthropic goals by aligning their interests with a certain aspect of your mission. People have an inherent desire to want to do good with their financial resources and you're giving them an opportunity to do that. I think it's so important just to talk to them. Don't go to them with a preconceived notion of what you want, but rather just sit down and talk to them about what they want to achieve and you can find something there that you can learn from.

Jill Wagar:

I gave a presentation not long ago to the Association of Fundraising Professionals here in northwest Arkansas and the title of that presentation was How to Secure a Major Gift Without Asking.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah.

Jill Wagar:

Because it's really about listening and then that's when the magic happens.

Robert Wagner:

Nice. Very cool. Well, congratulations on the success you've had in that area of your profession. I mean, it is a skill set and I think it's very unique, I guess. I'm not sure what the word is.

Jill Wagar:

Yeah.

Robert Wagner:

I'm excited about someone that can have that gift because it's important for all the organizations out there. Someone needs to be doing this, right? Tapping into people, like you say, want to do good and they don't always know how because they don't live in that world every day.

Jill Wagar:

Right. Well, it's truly an honor. The people that I've met and the relationships that I've built, many of them have become very personal friends and they know my kids, they know my husband, we all know each other. I know their grandkids. It's amazing work to be able to do.

Robert Wagner:

Well, Jill, I really appreciate the time today and we're kind of getting to the end of our time together, but we do have five questions we ask every guest. So are you ready?

Jill Wagar:

Let's do it.

Robert Wagner:

Okay. So what was the first way you made money?

Jill Wagar:

This is really fun. I was probably, I'm going to say 12 or 13, and I baked cakes for our neighbors.

Robert Wagner:

Oh, wow.

Jill Wagar:

So my mom and I went to a cake decorating class in Tulsa and I began to bake and decorate cakes and my neighbors started purchasing them for birthday parties, anniversaries, and other events. I'm not really quite sure how great they looked, but they tasted good so I started making some money there.

Robert Wagner:

That's cool. We have not had that one before so that's good.

Jill Wagar:

That's good, I'm glad.

Robert Wagner:

So if you were not an executive at Crystal Bridges, what do you think you would be doing?

Jill Wagar:

Well, when I went to college my mom, who was a nurse, wanted me to be a physician and my dad, who's an engineer, thought that was the best path for me. I think I would have liked either of those, but I would say at this stage in my life I'd really enjoy to work on the flip side of philanthropy, to award money to those doing great work.

Robert Wagner:

Oh, okay. Nice. Very nice. All right. Question three is, what would you tell your 20 year old self?

Jill Wagar:

Well, I have a 22 year old daughter and an 18 year old son, so there's things that I can tell them. But it is funny because I've listened to your podcast and I've heard many people say that their advice that they give to their 20 year old self was to lighten up or to kind of go with the flow.

Robert Wagner:

Right.

Jill Wagar:

But rather, I think I would say is to be intentional. My best success has come from when I've been intentional about what I wanted and I set specific goals to be able to achieve it. It comes with a lot of hard work, of course, and it's important to balance that with the ability to be flexible because I do believe that serendipity has a place within intentionality. And learning to have those crucial conversations and empathy would have served me well and would serve others well.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah, that's really good stuff. So many people at 20, and I was certainly in this category, they just kind of let life happen and come at you, and it doesn't have to be that way.

Jill Wagar:

Right.

Robert Wagner:

All right, Jill, what will the title of your book be?

Jill Wagar:

That's a really hard question. You probably already know that. I think I would say Making it Happen.

Robert Wagner:

Okay.

Jill Wagar:

So as I shared, I work intentionally and it's produced results for me. I'm a member of Gen X, which has a characteristic of focusing on the bottom line so that often describes my manner of working. Tell me what the end goal is and I'll define and execute the process to be able to make it happen. But more than generationally, it's also just how I'm calibrated.

Robert Wagner:

I hope you write it. That's a great title and I think you've been living it, so I hope you write that book. That's pretty cool.

Jill Wagar:

I'll have to think about that.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. So what's the... The last question is, what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Jill Wagar:

I think there's two, Robert. One is, never take a problem to someone without having possible solutions in mind. That has served me so well in so many conversations. And then the second one is that we can learn something from everyone. Don't discount anyone you come across in life, they have something that you need to know and something that you need to learn.

Robert Wagner:

That's really good and I think it's especially good from someone in your role because you tend to talk to people that culturally we would say are kind of the most important people, right? You talk to a lot of folks like that and just your perspective everyone has something to contribute, that's very good.

Jill Wagar:

Absolutely, 100%.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Well, Jill, again thanks so much for being with us. If folks want to find out more about Crystal Bridges or The Momentary, who do they do that?

Jill Wagar:

Yes, they can go to crystalbridges.org and also themomentary.org, and they can find out all kinds of information there.

Robert Wagner:

Okay, and what exciting exhibits are in place right now?

Jill Wagar:

Well, right now we have our Crystal Bridges at 10 exhibition, which is a wonderful celebration of our anniversary, our 10 year anniversary, which is... It's almost like 10 mini exhibitions. It's a great celebration of where we've been, but also points forward to where we're going. And there's several great exhibitions up at The Momentary also, so if you're coming to Crystal Bridges, go to The Momentary, if you're coming to The Momentary, come back over to Crystal Bridges.

Robert Wagner:

Okay. All right. Well, it's always a great time to visit over there, but maybe now especially given the 10 year anniversary. So again, Jill, thanks so much for being with us.

Jill Wagar:

Thank you, Robert, appreciate it. Have a good day.

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