Jill Medvedow Described as pathologically optimistic, Jill Medvedows commitment to civic causes began when she was young. Raised in New Haven, Connecticut, by parents who were political and social activists, Medvedow admitted that campaigning was something she was exposed to in utero. My parents taught me how to be a good citizen, she said. My mother was deeply engaged in volunteering for civic and charitable causes and my father was a prominent elected official. I grew up thinking I was part of the citys political fabric.5 Through her upbringing, she learned about the basic mechanics of organizing and how to move an agenda,6 skill sets that would serve her well in her professional life. Trained as an art historian, Medvedow arrived in Boston in 1986 from Seattle where she had founded a nonprofit contemporary arts center. In 1991 she became the first full-time contemporary curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, bringing in numerous performing and visual artists from around the world. When she left the Gardner in 1996, Medvedow was determined that her next career move would involve bringing art to a broader public. I was trying to figure out how to build a bridge between contemporary art and an audience that didnt have a great affection for it, she explained. I came up with the idea of framing public art projects through the history and landscape of Boston, which Bostonians typically have a lot of affection for. Within a year, she founded Vita Brevis, an organization devoted to producing temporary public art pieces. With the first Vita Brevis project near completion, Medvedow found herself being courted to become the ICAs next director. According to Rawn, who headed the search committee for the ICAs new director, it was Medvedows character as much as her curatorial background that made her such an attractive candidate: The minute you met Jill you immediately noticed that she is centered. She is not wowed by trends. In language, in dress, she is not the least bit pretentious. She doesnt try to be someone or something she isnt. She is not out to prove anything to anybody. She has a strong intellectual

base for her opinions on art. This part of her persona was reflected in her vision for the ICA, which was something that really struck us. She was passionate that the ICA needed to be relevant, very public and non-elitist, and that in order for it to succeed, it had to be better at outreach whether it was with school children, local politicians, donors, or members. A further selling point for the search committee was that because Medvedow was an outsider in the world of museum directors, she didnt come with old rivalries or attachments.

Striving to be Marginal When Medvedow took the reigns in March 1998, the ICA, with a yearly attendance of 25,000 (an average of 68 people a day) and a paltry budget just shy of $1 million, was in the midst of a severe identity crisis. The museum was housed in a converted police station and stable on Boylston Street, a building it had purchased from the city of Boston in the early 1990s with $328,000 in donations from trustees and overseers.7 (The Boylston address was the 10 th location the museum had had since its founding.) The quirky space was largely defined by an enormous staircase that cut down through the center of the buildings four floors, creating enormous space contraints for exhibits. Unlike other Boston-area museums which could hang more than 10 shows a year,8 the ICA was limited to just four, with months of down time in between shows. Partly because of space and largely because of money and lack of interest, the ICA had no permanent collection, an important symbol of status in the museum world, which also helped art institutions create an identity, draw repeat visitors, and build a donor base. Meanwhile, contemporary art could be viewed at a number of museums throughout Boston, many of which were backed by well-endowed academic institutions including MITs List Visual Arts Center, the Rose Art Museum (Brandeis), Massachusetts College of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, and Harvard University Art Museums. As Medvedow liked to say at the time, The ICA was striving to be marginal. Medvedows mandate was to stabilize and reinvent. As Cipolla explained, The ICA was doing some great work but it didnt really have a point of view. The programming was spotty, the outreach was not very strategic, and the building we were in was a physical manifestation of the inadequacy of the organization. The ICA needed to be a place that, by the nature of its work and outreach, touched multiple facets of the Boston community. In order to become this, we needed somebody driven, entrepreneurial, who would be forceful about change. One of the things that set Jill apart from the other candidates wasnt that she had spent a lifetime in contemporary art but rather than she understood how to work with audiences. She had the passion to bring content and interactive thinking and approaches to people of all ages across a spectrum of interests, getting the ICA outside of an elite and narrow comfort zone. She wasnt

willing to accept that what the ICA had to offer, or what contemporary artists had to say, was not important for all kinds of people. As part of her hiring agreement, Medvedow was allowed to bring Vita Brevis with her and fold it into the ICAs programming, a move that proved critical over the following years as the ICA strove to reposition itself. As one journalist noted at the time, Since the ICA has so much trouble pulling people in, putting art where people will virtually have to trip over it may be a smart move.9 Early Days Shortly after her arrival, Medvedow put together a business planning group comprised of three board members and three outsiders including Sheryl Marshall, who, as a top stockbroker, was a known business leader in Boston; Nick Littlefield, a lawyer who had served as Senator Edward Kennedys Chief of Staff for 10 years; and, Mary Schneider Enriquez, an art historian and critic who had recently moved to Boston from Mexico City. (Marshall and Schneider Enriquez would eventually join the ICA board.) With the help of the business planning group, Medvedow set out to disrupt the unproductive conversations of the existing board about the future of the ICA. As Medvedow recalled, We looked at a number of questions. What kind of audience did we want? Did we want to stay small and focused or did we want to broaden our offerings? What should be the role of education? We explored questions involving content, specifically if we should become a collecting institution. And finally we looked at whether we could do this work in our current Back Bay location. It didnt take long for the group to decide that the ICA needed to grow its audience, expand its educational initiatives, form a task force to look at the idea of collecting, and begin looking for a new space. (On two separate occasions, directors of the ICA who preceded Medvedow explored relocating the museum but were unable to garner board or community support.) Medvedows attention then turned to learning about the Boston real estate market. While she didnt know if or how it would be possible, she was clear that the ICA needed to be located on the water: Our job is uniquely difficult in that Boston is not a city that embraces contemporary art. Since everything about our work is unfamiliar, were always fighting for an audience. We needed to be located on the water in order to attract people and motivate them to come back time and again. And a waterfront location was also a perfect metaphor for what we do which is to expand horizons. After many months of knocking on doors to get information on Boston waterfront real estate, Mevedows research picked up momentum when the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, Justine Liff, referred her to Ed Sidman, one of Bostons big real estate developers and a major philanthopist. Sidman suggested they meet in the lobby of his firms building as opposed to his office, a request which sent an immediate negative signal to Medvedow. But she succeeded in flipping the switch:

After listening to my pitch, he was ready to send me off with a name of the next person I should talk to when I said to him, You know, I swim in your pool at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center in Newton. And he says, Oh really. And I say, Yes, and I frequently go to the openings in the centers gallery. The next thing you know hes saying, Lets go to my office. So now were in his office and Ive honed in on his passion which is how to get members of a JCC to engage in Jewish continuity and not just athletics. We ended up having a deep, intense conversation. The next thing I know, he has given me a couple good names to pursue for waterfront real estate. And for the next couple of years, I meet with him regularly to advise him on his project. Following up on Sidmans recommendations, Medvedow eventually landed a meeting with the Boston 2000 committee. Put together by Mayor Thomas Menino to plan millenial activities for Boston, one of the committees responsibilities was deciding who or what should be designated the .75 acre parcel, also known as Parcel J, on Bostons Fan Pier. Little did she know, the committee would end up being Medvedows last stop in her real estate search.

1)Describe what makes Jill Medvedow a leader. Use evidence from your course materials and details from the case to support your answer. You must identify at least 4 things (attributes, behaviors, etc) that make her a leader.

2) Jill displays several types of leadership. Identify at least 2 types of leadership she displays, using examples from the case and the definitions and attributes of that leadership style to justify your answer.