With our budget hearings.

Please grab your seats.

I'd like to call back to order the expanded budget finance and audit standing committee for the purposes of the budget hearings.

Afternoon.

Please call the roll.

Councilmember Scott Benson.

Councilmember Letitia Johnson.

Councilmember Denzel McCampbell.

Present.

Councilmember Renata Miller.

Councilmember Gabriela Santiago Romero.

Present.

Councilmember Mary Waters.

Present.

Councilmember Angela Whitfield Callaway.

Council President Pro Tempera Coleman A.

Young the Second.

Yeah, thank you at Pro Tempore.

Council President James State.

Mr.

President, you have a quorum president.

Thank you.

We have a quorum present, which means we're now in session.

Would like to bring representatives for the Wright Museum of African American history to come forward to begin the budget hearing.

Thank you all for being here.

Absolutely.

And I know you don't necessarily you don't have a slide deck or anything.

All right.

Just we like notes.

We just always want to make sure that the folks who are watching at home have an opportunity to kind of keep up with this.

So uh alerting any other departments that are moving forward or outside agencies, please provide us with something that the audience who are watching the meeting can also uh stay along, keep along with us.

That'd be appreciative.

All right.

Mr.

Barkley, the floor is yours, sir.

Good afternoon.

Good to see you all again.

Is your mic on, sir?

Good afternoon.

Much better.

It's good to see you all again and some of you for the first time at the council.

But uh lots of uh to lots to share with you this morning.

I want to thank Scott Benson, who is actually a trustee of the uh Wright Museum, uh Renata Miller, who's our council district uh representative Colmony Young, who uh uh continues to support the museum and their advocacy and all of you for the work that you do.

We have received letters from Mary Waters, Letitia Johnson, Angela Whitfield Callaway, and we had a phone uh uh scheduled with um uh Denzel McCampbell, but we'll follow up with him with individual questions.

I think that we've copied our responses to those.

We are still working on Angela uh Councilman Callaway's, uh which we received this morning.

We should be able to get it to her, however, by the end of the day or first thing in the morning.

Um we are requesting uh uh $3.3 million dollars in operating support and $7.7 million dollars in capital support on the capital side.

$3.5 million of this is critical, which our executive vice president Jeff Anderson to my right will talk about shortly.

But before we get into the details of why we we will need that request in the coming year, wanted to uh just share with you some of the milestones that the right has experienced in the past year.

Uh as many of you know, this was the right's 60th anniversary.

We completed that on March 12th, that year of celebration, making the right one of the nation's oldest and largest encyclopedic museums of African American history and culture, not only in the United States, but in the world.

Open luminosity, a curated exhibition featuring all Detroit-based artists.

If you haven't seen it, it's extraordinary, and there is a catalog that we created to go with it, which we have been sharing with our colleagues throughout the museum field, and they are extremely impressed with the artists that we have working among us.

As you some of you may recall in 2002, the right was named one of America's Cultural Treasures by the Ford Foundation.

In their estimate estimation, the right is an organization without which, and this is their quote, the cultural landscape of the United States would have been changed forever.

We are the recipient of awards from the uh um American Institute of Architects, Detroit, and Triple AM for excellence in our work in sustainability.

This last year we received a grant from the Getty Foundation for the preservation of our archives related to Detroit-based visual artists.

Uh we are selected by Autodesk to prototype or their new AutoCAD software for museums, which creates an electronic model of the right to be used by contractors and others for ongoing improvements.

Notably, as some of you may recall, our as a built drawings to the right were destroyed several years ago.

So we had no record of how the building actually was built.

The auto desk work has uh alleviated that problem.

And we now have uh documents in which we can see not only the spaces but what's behind the walls.

It's extraordinary.

And then we were commissioned by the Mellon Foundation, importantly, to create a C-suite executive leadership program for black museums, which we hope to debut in January of 2027.

But there are some headwinds for the right moving forward.

After seven years of directed grants from Governor Whitmer for $500,000, the grant was not included in her most recent request from the legislature.

And then in 2024, after receiving indications that the right will receive transitional funding from the state legislator, as it had in the previous two cycles, this funding was eliminated at the top of our fiscal year, meaning uh June 30.

We thought that it was in the budget, July 1 when the budget was published, it was not there.

Uh these funds added between four and six million uh blah blah blah.

This uh eliminated topics fiscal year.

That caused us to finance our operations in the last two cycles to use our lines of credit and their modest operating reserves to maintain programming, which had already been approved and contracted for.

These funds added between four uh these funds and transitional funding, just by note, had added between four and six million to our operating and capital support budgets during the previous two cycles.

Also, on the federal level, the IMLS program specifically dedicated for black museums was eliminated by the current administration, and the NEA and NEH grants must uh be rewritten as to not specifically target a specific race and making it uh making it challenging, if not impossible, for African American museums and indeed all museums of a color to apply.

Um so it's in this it's within this climate that we are operating.

Um it is an extremely challenging one, and one in which the right has been actively uh involved and pursuing is securing a millage of 0.2 mills over 10 years renewable for 10 years.

Um this millage proposal passed both houses in 2024 when it was sent over to the governor for signature.

There was a Scribner's, what's called the Scrivener's Error, that's also known as a typo in the number of the bill.

The Republican House has refused to correct that typo.

The Senate sued the House to compel that revision.

The circuit court ruled that the Constitution did require the legislature to submit the bills to the governor, and despite that ruling, the House appealed to the appellate court.

The appellate court also confirmed the second court circuit court's opinion, the House appealed to the Supreme Court.

It's now been briefed by both the House and the Senate in the Supreme Court, and we are waiting for an opinion.

What's important about this timeline, however, is that the uh legislation for a millage would have to be certified by the clerk by mid-May for us to uh get on to a November ballot.

If we don't make the November ballot, we must wait until 2028 to return to the millet effort.

With transitional funding not granted in fiscal year 2025, it's still pending for 2026.

There's uh mixed uh uh recognizance on whether or not we will be able to secure that.

And so it's unclear whether the the DHS and the right will be able to maintain current operations through 2028 without the support.

So what we've asked for is to repeat these uh subsidy that we received last year uh at 3.3 million, and we believe that we can pull together the remaining parts of our budget from other sources of fundraising that we have in place at the present time.

What that means is that the right, in addition to your three million, will raise nine million dollars over the next 12 months and will continue to do so until such will need to continue to do so until such time that a millet is found or other sources of ongoing income are found.

We have been successful in doing that in the past.

It is why my hair is as gray as it is today, I might add.

It was really a lovely brown when I started.

But it is a very challenging environment that we find ourselves in.

So I will leave it at that, and I'd like for my executive vice president Jeff Anderson to talk about the capital piece of our request.

Thank you, Neil.

And good afternoon, everyone.

Neil referenced the fact that our capital ask is the 7.7.

I believe each of you have in front of you the mechanical systems replacement project.

When we started this over three and a half years ago, uh at that time, uh there are some new members here.

I had indicated three and a half years ago that if we started this project, it was contingent upon having city council's uh commitment over that duration to get this project done.

And so our ask of 7.7 is the final stage, phase seven stage.

And uh if we can secure that, then this project will be completed uh next year, beginning July 1 to June 30th of uh fiscal 27.

So we'd like to get that particular project done.

The document that you have in front of me, you will also notice that I'll explain that uh it shows that there's a remaining uh balance or cost, and so I want to explain that.

First of all, uh I do want to say thank you to Scott uh for helping to secure the latest uh two million in the current supplemental budget.

So when you're looking at the remaining costs on this document, you'll see that it reads 9 million 511 and some change.

That has to do with the fact that the two million that was just uh secured under the supplemental current budget, that work is just starting and will be completed at the end of June, this current fiscal uh, thus leaving just phase seven, which is the amount that we're asking for.

Wait, anything else, uh Jeff, that you wanted to share at this point.

Uh the only other thing that I would point out for uh council is is that um when you're looking at the amount that has spent been spent to date on this project, it's also important to remember that five million of this amount, a little over five million, came from transitional funding from the state.

So the state did have a uh uh arm in this uh and so you know that money typically we would be using that money for general operating and program support, but we allocated it to make sure that this project continued to where we are today.

Takes us to the end of the presentation.

All right, thank you so much, and I will turn over to your trustee, member Benson.

How are you?

Um good afternoon, gentlemen, and thank you for being here again.

And so not many questions from me as I have the the privilege of sitting on the board and uh knowing the the intimate details of the workings of the museum, and just also knowing where we've come as an institution, where we've come from to where we are now.

And this is the second city cultural asset uh museum type that we've seen.

So we saw the historic yesterday, we see the Charles H.

Wright today, and just to see how the numbers and the support from the city have grown over the years and how the balance sheets of those institutions have grown as well.

Uh, when I arrived at the right, we were just leaving there's new leadership.

Neil, you had just arrived when I got to the board, and at the time before you arrived, the right was a hand-to-mouth institution financially.

The numbers were terrible.

There was always the threat, it sort of damocles above our head as an institution, and we would close is due to lack of funding and resources.

This is also where leadership matters, and so I want to thank you and the team that you've assembled, all of you all included, about the level of talent that you brought there and what you've been able to do.

And so looking at the at the collections, looking at the fact that we're able now to manage the deferred maintenance of the city asset.

I just want to remind everybody that we own that museum as a city, and we own the entire collection as well.

And you all are the stewards of that, and we charge you to go out and find money and get the museum named one of the number top 10 institutions in the entire country that we couldn't do without, and you all do that very well.

And you all do that very well, which is also why it's important that we look at these capital ask and understand the importance of them.

And so, Jeffrey, my question to you is going to be what have we been able to get from our money as far as a capital investment that we've been making.

And as Donnie Johnson knows well, the city has been putting in significant amounts of money into the right.

And that money, I believe, has been put to good use.

But I would like for you to talk about that.

And then I want to say also thank you to the mayor, because she's the one that committed to authorizing that two million dollars this year, because that was something that was authorized by this body last year, but it didn't have to happen.

And so she made sure that the right did get that two million dollars this year to continue on with the phase because the current construction was going to have to stop if that money was not authorized, and that money came in in early February, and the progress of the actual construction is going to have to stop if we didn't get that authorization in February as well.

So I just want to make sure that also thank the mayor for her support.

But just tell us what has our investment on the capital side gotten us.

Thank you for that question, Scott.

Um so I'll just give a little bit of background.

I arrived uh in Detroit in May of 2019.

Started my job June 3rd of 2019.

And at the time that I started my job, there were two major things that uh were dropped in my lap.

One was the operating agreement that the museum has with the city that was going to expire in October.

I started in the beginning of June.

The second was that the city had awarded a contract for a contractor to do the flat two flat tier roof uh replacement at that time.

Since I didn't have enough time to review, I asked uh the department whether they would postpone the work being done until I had a chance to review the scope and then get back to them.

So we were able to do that.

Uh your money went to replacing what was a 30-year-old roof, both flat.

That happened in 2019, 2020.

COVID hit, we were able to still get work done, even though we were closed to the public.

We then uh did work on the dome.

So that's where your money went in those first two years.

We then got allocation for to begin the work uh for the mechanical, and we started that work, and I think it may have been your second allocation in which uh I had a conversation with Donnie Johnson to ask him could could we take some of the money that was allocated for the mechanical to address the Farnsworth pedestrian bridge, which had severe damage to that bridge, and I was afraid that if we went another year or two, then it would present a danger to people crossing that bridge.

And so we then did the complete overhaul of the Farnsworth Pedestrian Bridge, and then turned our attention back to the mechanical project.

And so uh we have over the last three and a half years, your money has gone to getting uh phases one, two, three, and four.

There are multiple phases in some of those.

Uh we are in phase five, which will take us through the end of June.

It was also important for us uh the project team, we identified the fact that the museum, unlike most museums, is operating without a generator.

So if power were to go out in Midtown, we couldn't operate.

And so, as part of this project, we decided to add a generator that would allow the institution to stay open and function, uh, regardless of whether there was a power allergy or not.

So that's in this current phase that'll take us through uh the end of June.

Uh you uh were gracious to award the museum uh ARPA dollars, and those ARPA dollars, along with some other supporters uh funding, went to redo the GM Theater, which is uh to this day getting rave reviews uh for performances and other activities that are held in that particular space.

Uh and so that's where your money has went.

Uh, and I welcome uh to host the entire city council body and their staff at the museum so that you can take a walk through with me to see exactly where your money has gone.

Thank you.

And then just lastly, uh just want to say it once again it's critical that we support our institutions, and you're the third culture institution that we've seen.

And so we have the zoo, we've had the Charles A.

Wright, we've had the historic.

Obviously, there's a millage.

I requested an updated resolution supporting the village on behalf of City Council, but also you are also member institutions, and so I always also urge my colleagues to become uh members of our own institutions.

Um great family opportunities.

If you become a member of the Wright, you're able to go to numerous hundreds of museums around the country for free.

In Chicago, in West Bloomfield, in Los Angeles.

And so think about it.

And the zoo offer discounted member uh rates.

So these are great opportunities to support our own institutions personally uh and with your families, and just when it comes back to leadership again, I'm not sure who hasn't seen it, but the social media campaign that's being done now by the right is going to be award-winning.

It is it it is fantastic, it's amazing, and it just shows that just because we're a black institution doesn't mean that we have to struggle.

We can also be tip of the spear, cutting edge, and leave the pack, and that's what you're doing at the right.

And so for me as a board member, it is an honor to sit there and help steward our city asset, and I strongly encourage everybody to support.

I am going to make a motion uh to include the capital ask of 7.78, excuse me, 7.78 million dollars to the executive session.

Colleagues, there's a motion on the floor.

Any objections?

Seeing none, that action shall be taken.

I also want to thank you all for hosting my two bike rides during MLK Day from the Wright Museum as well as the Juneteenth bike ride and your support of the Motor City Kwanzaa Canara, the largest canara on the planet.

Thank you.

If I could too on the capital side, just add um that you know, one of our issues around capital support is that the city does own that facility, and for those who are new to the console, it's important to understand that as a 501c3 nonprofit, we get virtually no traction for support for what is a government facility.

Uh they see that as a sort of red line between supporting an individual government and or supporting a nonprofit, and so we have had very little success in um uh convincing our foundation partners, for example, to do that.

What we have been able to do though is to work to get some of the FFE done, which is not considered uh necessarily a capital.

So things like equipment for those facilities.

We did receive a large grant for the Knight Foundation to underwrite the equipment for the theater, both the orientation theater and the GM Theater.

So where we can, we do uh augment those expenses.

Uh we were also asked about some grant making that we had applied for on the federal level, uh about 2.2 million dollars along working with the Smithsonian and Wayne State that we had applied for uh were in line to receive it very quickly, and as those as an administration changed those grants were canceled.

So again, those would have been capital support grants on the federal level that we had all but secured.

So we continue to work on that.

Thank you.

Member Callaway.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and good afternoon, everybody.

Good afternoon.

Um I'm going somewhere with this.

My question will be at the end.

Spelman College, celebrating 145 years, founded on April the 11th in 1881 for the purpose of educating black women, founded in Atlanta, Georgia, originally known as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, renamed Spelman College in 1924 in honor of John D.

Rockefeller's wife, Laura Spellman Rockefeller.

We just invested over 96 million dollars in our fine arts program and our new building on campus.

I say that because the Spelman College Museum of Art recently loaned its exhibit, the silver linings to the University of Michigan Museum of Art, generating revenue through entry fees.

Everybody wanted to see the exhibit.

So I would imagine it was profitable for them.

Considering that the Charles W, the Charles H.

Wright Museum could have been an ideal and still can be an ideal host for this exhibit.

Could you please share with me and us the museum's current relationship with HBCU art collections, which are popular around the nation, and its archives regarding loans and exhibitions and describe any planned programming strategies to increase visitor engagement and generate additional revenue as the University of Michigan's art museum did when it collaborated with my alma mater.

Congratulations from Spelman.

I know that the campus and the university very well, as well as the curator there.

You know, we are offered exhibits from all over the world constantly.

We were not offered that particular one, I suspect, because our uh exhibition schedule is three years in the future, meaning we have scheduled our exhibitions in most of our spaces for the next two to three years.

Um, it is something that we constantly talk to our HBCU colleagues, they pitch us exhibitions.

Uh now, you know, again, we weren't as visible, I think, until recently as an organization that would take these exhibitions.

And given now that we also have our HBAC system in place, you know, to host these exhibitions, you are required to have humidity controls, uh temperature controls, security mechanism in place in the galleries that we did not have.

And so we could not have hosted those many of the exhibits that we're traveling because we didn't have that infrastructure.

The investment that you've done in the HBAC system now allows us to do that.

And what we're finding is we are virtually inundated now with opportunities to host different exhibitions.

The next two exhibitions are actually created by the right uh to do the reverse to pitch to our HBCU colleagues and our other colleagues at black museums.

Um the the exhibitions center on voting, uh the Electoral College being the first one that will open in the fall, and then the art of voting, which traces um the African American how African Americans had were uh essential to creating what we now consider the right to vote, particularly African American women.

Um those exhibits are um enhanced with all kinds of new technology and interactivity.

Uh I think they will create a great deal of buzz when they are revealed.

Um, and so um on in our part we get opportunities to host other exhibitions, but we're also creating exhibitions for the field.

Uh that particular one did not come to us.

I suspect it there is a Spellman connection at Michigan that may have brought that to them before it was brought to us.

But certainly we are in contact with uh the folks at Spellman are friends and colleagues of ours, and we hope that in fact they will participate in our executive leadership training program.

Awesome.

And hopefully you will consider having a honey um, I'm sorry, Barnett Honeywood um exhibit.

I don't I don't know if there's any of her artwork at the museum, but okay.

I I thought I saw something there.

Okay, my last question is, and thank you so much, and I'm looking forward to that relationship leading to a possible partnership with respect to having some of their um art because that's not the only one that they have at the college.

They have people exhibits are often not pitched to black museums, right?

They are pitched to universities and you know, that work, uh, but I think increasingly there are more of us.

I don't think so.

Well, we have Ms.

Berkeley, is there is there a mic on?

It's hard for me to see because I can't see that's what I thought.

You do that every year.

We do the same.

So just uh speak of closer to it.

Well, put it a little bit more directionally towards you.

Is that better?

Much better.

Yes, sir.

I'd like to um work with you in that regard.

We have a National Association of Spelman College alumni, and I'm sure we can um help make something happen.

My last question is, and thank you so much, and I'm looking forward to that partnership.

The Detroit Institute of Arts currently operates, and it's in its 15th year, the Inside Out program, and I mentioned this to the Michigan Historical Museum director yesterday, placing replica artworks through the state to increase engagement and visitorship.

We have some of those reproductions at Palmer Park and on our post office at Livernoy and Eight Mile, and they're throughout the city, I would imagine.

I don't even know about um in my in my community.

Does the Charles H.

Wright Museum have plans, if you haven't already, to implement pop-up exhibits, outdoor installations, or similar initiatives to expand extend public engagement and generation additional revenue, generating additional revenue.

We do.

That particular program, um, we have looked at actually for several years in replicating that.

Uh you know, as you may or may not recall, the Wright's collection uh was subject to a flood of three or four years ago.

Um we are still in the process of both um re-archiving and restoring to some cases those uh pieces, but in terms of replicating them, it is something that we could do, and I and I would love to see us have more of that around the state, frankly, not just around the city.

We are uh going to be unveiling too, though, a program that will be based in um neighborhoods and neighborhood uh recreational centers, etcetera, of cultural programming uh over the next year or so.

So it will do some of what you're talking about in terms of just engaging the community more deeply in our work.

Um, you know, frankly, we were really concentrating on the facility itself these last few years and stabilizing that, and we feel like we're in a place now where we can do some of these programs that are farther afield um from the building itself.

So those are all great suggestions.

We'd love to do that, and we'd love to work with you on that.

I would love to work with you on that, and I'm excited about the possibilities.

I know that when we went to Mackinac last year, the DIA had its um had its inside out program all around.

You all were remind us of it every year.

I'm just saying now, but anyway, you saw it.

I mean, we were all there.

For sure, for sure.

I'm looking forward to it, yeah.

We also uh I think it was like three years ago when we sat down with the Wayne County Airport Authority, and we had uh asked for that meeting uh about showcasing art at the airport, and when we met with them, uh they were interested, but then uh we had a follow-up meeting in which they said they were doing an assessment of how their art was art was displayed or how you uh would solicit them, and we uh nothing's come of that.

We haven't heard anything about that particular assessment.

So uh and that was something that we definitely uh are interested in, particularly given uh that in 2028 uh the Wright Museum has been asked to be the host for the African American Association of Museums conference here in Detroit.

Uh and so that would be something definitely we would love to be able to engage them about.

It's their 50th anniversary conference, and some of you may recall Dr.

Wright was instrumental in creating that association 50 years ago.

So to have it here is a great honor.

If you can write down April the 11th, we're doing a street unveil for Viola Luizo, and if you could do some type of special exhibit at the museum in her honor, we are expecting a large turnout.

Her family is coming in from out of town.

Um it will be on the well, the actual street unveil will be on the corner of Pembroke and um Mansfield because she was eulogized at the church there that is now a charter school, but um everything remains intact, all of the stained glass, even the chapel is still there, so that is April the 11th.

We think it will be around 11 a.m.

And if we the Charles, if the museum could do some type of um small scale exhibit, we can make sure that um they get over to the museum, all the visitors.

We can do our part.

Just put it on your calendar, and thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Uh member Johnson.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um good afternoon.

How are you?

Um great, thank you.

Did you get our memo?

I did.

I did, thank you.

Um, and I appreciate you for um responding to the questions.

I I do want to ask Mr.

Donnie Johnson a question relative to the capital request.

Do we currently have any dollars in the capital budget to accommodate the request?

Uh, through the chair to Councilmember Johnson, there is currently no capital programmed in the FY27 budget for um the Charles Wright Museum.

Uh resources were fairly limited for this budget cycle for capital allocation, and so it unfortunately did not make the cut.

Okay, you're gonna make us work hard.

All right, thank you.

I don't I don't have anything further, but thank you so much for everything that you all do for um maintaining the museum for doing these improvements as well.

Uh it's greatly appreciated, noting that maintenance is an ongoing thing that has to be addressed, but we certainly do appreciate you um taking great care of the museum and its artifacts.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Member McCampbell.

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you all for being here as well.

It's good to meet you all and get to see you.

I uh also want to express my gratitude for all the work that you all do.

Um the Charles H.

Wright is um essential, not only for Detroit, but uh for black folks across the country and around the world.

So um and people are all but especially black folks.

So thank you uh for that.

Uh I wanted to touch on the community uh outreach side just to know I know folks know recreation centers are usually the easiest place to get folks, but you know, D7 doesn't have one yet, so just to make that as you're thinking about we do have other community anchors that could serve as places to do some of that community outreach and and uh such with Charles H.

Wright.

So would love to partner with you on that.

Um member Benson touched on this, and we talked, and I tell members of my team about your social media um videos and such.

And I just had a question further on that because I think it's also could be a blueprint on you know, a lot of folks, institutions are thinking about how do we reach uh certain age demographics, how do we actually be effective on social media?

Um so have you seen an impact on uh that social media campaign to bring new folks into and more folks into the museum?

It's huge, actually.

Um we're seeing um, I would say uh exponential is probably too strong, but we're seeing much better attendance based on the social media of a younger demographic to the museum, people just coming in to check it out.

It has uh the social media campaign has 1.2 million views.

It was just written up in the association of Afric of Museums um uh most recent um magazine as emblematic of what museums could be doing in social media.

They actually compliment our our our uh staff, many of whom are actors, as we can't tell.

Um, so they take on take those roles very seriously, you know.

And it's been uh just a wonderful we even have the folks from Abbott Elementary have liked us and are following the uh the campaign.

So it's been a huge success for us.

We want to continue it.

Um we can preview that uh tonight uh at 6 p.m.

The new one drops featuring Governor Whitmer.

So she's in the most latest um iteration of the campaign.

So we're really excited about it.

Yeah, it's been very, very successful for us.

Oh, that's great.

That's great to hear.

And I know council president has brought this up about the storytelling and narrative on this floor.

I'm thinking maybe that's something that we pitched to media service to have something like that.

Not to take your not to take your idea in that, but uh uh but uh you know, also the only ones.

No, it's great.

And uh also switching gears uh to you know, what you had talked about around the federal funding and grants and you know, especially and the state level as well.

So I hope that as I as the state goes through the budget process that that money gets put back in.

But you mentioned having to rewrite grants as such to try to appeal to federal dollars.

How do you see the adjustment?

Is that do you feel positive about that adjustment is trying to pull down federal money, or there are you approaching trying any other things to get that funding on that level?

Well, the program uh in the federal government's you know scheme of grants that was most um useful to uh the right was the Institute of Museum and Library Services grant specifically designed for black museums.

As some of you may know, Lonnie Bunch, who's now the head of the Smithsonian, was the head of the African American Museum uh in DC before he was given that appointment.

And one of the his uh stipulations when he took the job at the national was that a program be established within the federal government that would fund local um black museums.

His fear being that all of the resources could be taken by this national museum, leaving some of the museums in Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, without a resource to really keep them uh uh lively, and that uh program was um eliminated altogether.

So we then have the NEA and the NEH, and these are the programs where you cannot mention a race focused program within the grant application.

So if you're a black museum, you have to write about a program that you could do that is in keeping with our mission without mentioning that it happens to be about black folks.

Right.

So it's been a real challenge, there's no question.

Um some of the folks at the uh particularly the National Endowment for the Arts have been helpful and helping us to uh reframe our narratives for that.

But so far we have not been successful.

The letters that we get back are you know, unfortunately, your proposal is not in keeping with the current philosophy of the current administration.

No.

That's unfortunate.

Okay.

Unbelievable.

Um definitely if you can I know we'll be in communication established our communication back for just keep us updated on those.

But you know, the the EPA and the other programs, that's a real was a real avenue, you know.

But again, there again, the EPA has been got it, you know, which is where uh a large grant was pending with ourselves and the Susonian and several of our sister organizations.

Um and there were some other possibilities in the federal budget that uh we had gone after, and we're you know, had the administration stayed the same, would have been awarded.

Um but those are also now been curtailed.

So it's it's an interesting environment.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

Say the least.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Member Santiago Romero.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Good afternoon, good to see you all.

Good to see you.

I we love the right museum.

Our office has been at the museum for both fun and for work.

So once again, I encourage any colleagues if you want to do a retreat, if you want to have a meeting, there's space at the museum, so thank you for having us.

Um I too don't have questions.

Grateful that we moved the budget over so that we can discuss how we can help.

Um, the questions that were asked by my colleagues around attendance and budgeting.

I've seen the responses too, um, and I feel pretty good about those.

I guess with my time, um, in your presentation, you mentioned that you you're obviously experts um and and people come to you for support and for help.

Do you ever consult charge uh for these services?

Can you?

I'm just trying to think of ways, right?

Because you're again, you're experts, you know what you're doing.

If you're producing these for others, can you charge a sort of consulting fee to help support your efforts?

Um it's sort of a delicate.

I figured that might be the case.

I think what it does do is draw more um uh support from foundations and corporations who hear that we have advised so and so and such and such in places that are farther afield from Detroit, for example.

You know, if we we were on the phone uh recently with the St.

Louis um group of um St.

Louis folks who want to start an African American museum, they are a smaller one.

Um and um they are coming out to do a site visit now, et cetera.

But you know, probably when that gets going, uh we will uh both be credited for helping them do that, and hopefully that'll bring more resources in.

Um the one thing that did uh come to our attention though was the the C-suite executive leadership program, which the Mellon Foundation commissioned us to create.

So they gave us a grant to pull together a group of advisors, and that program will roll out significant dollars, not just for the right, but for the field and training um C-suite leaders to lead these organizations.

Um it's great to have money when you do, but what you really need are people who understand the complexities of what they're dealing with and the various challenges that we really face, and to have the skills to really deal with um those challenges at a very high level.

So I think that program will do that for us and also for museums around the country.

And I can see that bringing uh additional support to the right.

Um the chair, I can too.

You are an institute.

You might you know this could be a team and arm that is doing that work that's consults that brings in money that continues to spread the field.

Um just want to share that because I I see that, and I think I think it's an opportunity for folks to lean into.

Um wholeheartedly agree the social media team is doing great.

So much fun to see um what they've been producing.

Same question though.

Uh apparently you can make money off of social media.

Have you tried to monetize?

I don't even know how this works.

But with the views with the clicks, can you get money for the museum through these efforts?

Uh most likely.

I mean, we really literally just started it.

Like, you know, we're in our fourth episode.

And you know, who knew who knew that it would be as popular as it is?

Um certainly that's uh something we could look at, you know.

You know, but again, our team has a full-time job at the right.

So we're talking about creating a whole nother line of business, either consulting or in social media, over and above the work that we're doing.

And I always have to remind folks, you know, we're compared a lot, for example, to the DIA, right, and what they're doing here and there, et cetera.

They have 400 employees.

We have 56.

Right.

So you know, this is a hard working team, but you know, we're we we are at capacity.

You want to say something though?

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Um I did want to say that we just had a meeting with the young man uh who um is responsible for the social media, and one of the things we talked about is how to protect that work.

Uh but I can tell you from working on trademarking and all that, it's a process.

So uh, but we are looking into how we can protect uh if there's a way for us to do that.

So it is drawing a lot of attention.

So through the chair.

Uh well, thank you.

I appreciate knowing that's these are conversations that are that are being had.

Um I I don't think that we need to compare this to the DIA.

It is very different.

Very different.

It's very special.

You have your own talents, your own unique just like beauty and arts, and I I say let's let's hone in on that, let's support that.

Um there's a lot of growth, I think, moving forward, and looking forward to seeing how we can help you sustain the building so that you're able to continue to do the creative work that you do now.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I um thank you for responding to our questions.

Um I do want to know about your staffing though.

Um you have vacancies.

Uh we don't in the current configuration.

We are expanding though in some key areas, particularly in development and marketing to the point of this staff, you know, just beefing up those staffs a little bit.

But we have just completed a round of hires um in marketing and development to bring in those senior people.

They're both extraordinary.

Uh I think you'll see uh some additional um benefit from those two hires, but we don't yet, but we will be announcing.

I think it's four new uh positions in the coming year to be sort of beef up those staffs.

Um when you look at your memberships.

You have more uh senior citizens, do you have more of the younger people or somewhere in between?

Historically, we've had mostly seniors, right?

Mostly senior citizen people who have been familiar with and with the museum for some years, you know, they just continue to renew, right?

Um, but I think the social media campaign is bringing in a younger demographic to us, as well as the performances and the right conversations that we've been able to do, which have been getting quite a bit of attention really in that middle demographic, and this is all strategic when you look at the program mix, right?

We see we have efforts to really maintain the senior population.

Um we have the work we're doing in the theater mostly that is really about um that sort of middle young professional, professional uh demographic, and then increasingly with social media and some other programs that you see.

We do a late night program third Thursdays is wildly popular for it at young people in, you know, for that event when we do it.

Um so uh yeah, we're getting a mix now, but it historically it was mostly seniors, yeah.

Okay, well, that's good to hear.

So um we're certainly interested in working with you on any level that we can just let us know.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

All right.

I got a good qu uh quick question.

I know we've been talking about the social media campaign, and I think what kind of ties with it just the pop culture period.

So is there any uh any way to find any swag uh from the right anywhere outside of the right?

So I think you know that having it being accessible, having being able to wear it on your shirt or having a bag or something like that, I think is pretty cool, but unless you go into the space, you may not leave out with anything to say this.

The stores online.

Uh, if you go into the right, there is a store button.

Um the store, by the way.

We just got news at our director's meeting this afternoon.

The store for Black History Month did 41,000 worth of sales in one month.

So, you know, and so and uh and we're not open every day, right?

We're only open uh six days a week.

Um but it is available online.

Um all of the most of the swag at least that we have in-house is available online and some other things as well.

So the t-shirts, the sweatshirts, all of that's available.

But any partnerships.

I mean, again, I think that's it, it's always pretty cool to see, you know, the right and Gucci.

You know, I'm just I'm just being real with you.

Like where you're going with that.

They're here in Detroit, right?

I mean, again, I'm talking about real genuine partnerships that you could you know uh elevate the brand of the right with folks who are not necessarily just Detroiters.

Yeah, um, but uh also you know the cool factor, you know, add add on to it.

I like it.

I like where you're going.

Yeah, we should we we can look into that more for sure.

You will find so you will find, I know we do uh the uh collection, Somerset Collection, the one that's downtown.

We have product in that uh space as well.

Uh so we do that, and it's very popular.

Um but uh we're always looking for new ways to to get uh the uh material out and product out so that it's other people are aware of what we're doing.

So awesome.

Okay.

Um all of the my question of being right, but great job with the dollars that you've been provided up to this point.

Want to see how you continue to remember Benson's point, you know, prior to you sitting in that seat, it was literally every year the museum may close.

The museum they close.

So you've done a tremendous job, you and your team, so thank you.

Uh kudos to you for that.

Um Pro Tim.

Thank you, Ms.

President.

Um, always good to see.

Before I begin, I just wanted to say that Member Callaway.

I know part of the reason why she's talking about Spelman and her sororities because she's very proud of you, but also is because one of her sore wars is Kamala Harris.

Uh, and so she was stunned on everybody silently.

I just want to say I picked up what you were trying to do.

Uh get past me, member Callaway.

That's a humble brag she just did in front of everybody like that.

But I saw it.

So I'll let you know.

Um first of all, I just wanted to say to you, I love the social media campaign with the office.

I thought it was absolutely hilarious.

And I and I hope you keep that up.

But the reason why I want to talk to you is because usually I talk about artificial intelligence.

I'm not gonna talk to you about that.

And the reason why is because I just think in a time where we're living now where people are saying that black people benefited from slavery.

In a time where we are uh literally talking about erasing the history of that, where they are taking down monuments to that history, where they're taking down monuments to the Tuskegee Airmen.

Our history and our contributions are under attack and assaults.

Um I know constantly when I'm out in my travels and people are talking about the slave trade.

A lot of times they try to blame it on the Africans who went traded with the uh colonizers at that time, but what they don't talk about is the fact that one, no one asked the colonizers to come across the Atlantic.

Um Africa was never in debt or in war with those that colonized it, not once, but twice.

And also the colonizers controlled the slave trade.

And also, when they went over there, um part of the things that they did is they said, listen, after they took the gold and the grain and the ivory, he said, either give me your slaves, or you see these guns right here, I'm gonna give them to your opposing tribe.

That's not called cooperation, that's called coercion.

And this is a history that is not really taught, and it's been kind of lost.

And so I just wanted to ask you it's a credible responsibility and burden that you carry.

And I just want to know are there exhibits, are there talks, are there tours?

Um, I I'm sure you probably partnered up with our historian uh um to be able to talk about that.

Just kind of tell me what we're doing to educate the public about the real truth about the slave trade and that experience.

So the core exhibit of the riot, of course, is about the Africans' experience on this in in the Americas or now the United States of America.

And so it does trace from that moment um of trading, you know, and talks about the transatlantic slave trade.

Um, which, you know, when we were in Africa, they didn't even they called it the European slave trade.

It's not transatlantic because the trading only went one way.

Right.

Right.

Trans suggests that it went two ways, and they corrected us when we were in Ghana about that fact.

But that exhibit does trace that, and in fact, is the model for the Smithsonians exhibit on the same subject, right?

Our curators helped the Smithsonian create the exhibit that is in Washington, DC now that looks at the story of our people through to the present day.

What we also do now, though, is something called the right conversations.

And what we're doing with that series is bringing in important thinkers, artists, critical leaders, black folks who really can talk in depth about what is happening.

Um Benjamin Crump uh talking about you know what happened with uh the various clients that he represents, you know.

Um, you know, uh Nikki Giovanni before right before she passed.

The next season brings in Stacy Abrams to augment our electoral college exhibit, right?

So we're also bringing in these thought people that can really help us understand and unpack.

Um Abby Phillips will be here right after the election to talk a little bit about what happened.

You know, give us a little insight about what went down.

So we're really augmenting the programming that we, you know, the exhibit that we have with other kinds of exhibits that focus on critical issues to black folks, but also to all of us, frankly, because again, black history is actually American history.

We can't forget that.

And you take out the black experience of American history, you don't have a lot of history left.

Think about it, right?

Um, so it's really the same, right?

And so uh we in everything that we do, we try to talk about how the history of uh African Americans really has a resonance today, right?

So we don't just look at the history, we don't look backwards.

We say we're bringing up the electoral college because we forget that that came into being because they considered black folks three three fourths, three-fifths, three-fifths of a person, right?

That's how that was created.

That's what that was about.

So when we think, why do we have electoral college?

You know, people need to be reminded of that.

When you look at elections wit large, we forget that it was African American women who secured the right, not just for black men, but for women in general to receive the right to vote.

When men were given the right to vote, women still did not have the right to vote.

And it was African American women who brought that into being, you know.

So it's these kinds of nuanced stories that the right is involved in telling, and I think they're critically important to your point, right?

It's the part that's left out, you know, people don't understand why we might see history differently than some other folks, right?

Because our lived history tells us a slightly different story on the narratives that are constantly being talked about, the one even that you mentioned, you know, they forget the coercion piece.

Right.

Black folks be involved in the slave trade, for example, right.

No, and I was just also going to say, um, I uh I I think it's important to you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's important for people to understand that the slavery involved the translated slave trade is different than any other form of slavery because it's not based on war, religion, debt crime, or status.

It is based on there was never a fully developed widespread hereditary chattel caste-based system of enslavement based on the social construct of race prior to the transatlantic slave trade.

And so I think that that is something that is different with our slave trade than every other slave trade.

And I think the problem a lot of times we have people try to conflate the slave trade, you know, or the you know the troubles in Ireland, which is based on religion or based on debt and not based on an immutable characteristic of race.

I wanted to establish that.

But secondly, this would be my final question.

I wanted to say this uh is it's a little bit different.

The struggles are different, but the tactics are the same.

So I think we um are at a time it starts with uh undocumented workers in illegal immigration or or immigration.

I you know, the pay you there was a time where they were asking people for their papers who were undocumented workers.

Dell's tactics originally came from the slave trade.

And when they were asking black people for their papers.

Um the the 14th Amendment, even though it impacts people differently, um, from our perspective, the 14th Amendment was supposed to be about freedom.

The 14th Amendment, um, but what happened was it ended plantation slavery, but it continued prison slavery because it says that um slavery is prohibited except for a crime, and that's where COVID leasing began.

When it comes to the documented community, it says that if you're born in this country, you are a citizen, and now they're trying to reverse that because of what happened.

The problems that they have in Mexico, and the problems that we have in Africa are similar in part because in Mexico, 70% of the guns come, it can be sourced back to the United States.

We are the number one consumer of the drugs that the cartels have, and also of the human trafficking that happens.

So we're financing and we are arming a country that we are then denying the cities who are coming back to our country seeking refuge for the policies that we have.

So this is why we have the issue with undocumented workers.

In Africa, part of the reason why they have the problem they have with guns and violence is because of the slave trade and the fact that we were arming African tribes because we were saying either give us your slaves or you see these guns, we're gonna give them to your opposing tribes, because Africa was separated tribes before the um before the social construct of race was opposed upon them.

And so what happened was slavery went from something that was about a punishment or something that was because of war, where they are actually starting wars because of the translated slave trade.

Is there any exhibit or is there any historical analysis that kind of shows those type of similarities in that role?

And I and I understand, you know, because I know I'm gonna get killed on social media or gonna get dragged in my emails.

I understand about Gasper Yanga and you know slavery in Mexico and the silver mines.

I get all that.

But there, but we also have to forget that during the um translated slave trade, um, the Underground Railroad also went south.

We also have to remember that Juan Garrito, who uh said who told um people in Texas that they can't have their slaves here because we ended slavery in Mexico was also of mixed race, and part of that was being black as well.

So you have to remember that aspect.

Is there any sort of exhibit to kind of show that type of similarities and interactions and how we share those same histories and bonds together?

Really interesting point because I hadn't I hadn't really thought of it that way.

However, um one of my colleagues uh had been appointed to create uh the Mexican American museum on the mall in uh DC, which is now canceled, right?

And one of the things that we talked about a great deal is what were some of the similarities in the ways that both communities were treated historically that can be lifted up and talked about between these two institutions, right?

Uh it was just gonna be a Smithsonian institution, and it's no longer been funded, it's been defunded, right?

But yeah, that's a it's a great idea for an executive, by the way.

Okay, I'm gonna tell our curator.

Um thank you, appreciate you.

And uh thank you, Ms.

President.

I'm done.

Thank you.

Member Miller.

Um, I was actually trying to get a stop work order on a business that was going to be an environmental concern to a neighborhood, and it was they're about to pour concrete.

So I apologize for making that a precedence.

Thank you, uh President Pro Tim for that history lesson.

You are an amazing uh you can tell he knows his research, but I'm just gonna bring it on home and keep it with black folk and the African American museum.

Thank you, sir.

I am a product of Tuskegee, then Institute slash university.

So I truly understand when you talk about colonizers, but right now we deal with the descendants of the colonizers.

And so we're gonna stick with what we're dealing with right here, right now in the United States.

So as a I became a member at 30, 29, 30 years old, and my daughters became a members at 10 years old and five years old, we held memberships.

I want to know what is just your membership look like.

How much is the membership for those that are listening?

Because it is imperative that we live in a society where they want to bash you if you say anything black.

You can't be pro-black either, you just can't.

But while we support all cultures and ethnicities, it is some it is heart-wrenching that if you stand up for your own heritage, you are slammed.

So it is imperative that we have this museum, that we maintain this museum so we can educate, so we can provide the education for our youth and for people to not understand our plight, and that we're able to tell our truth.

Everybody wants to tell our story, but we don't need their help.

We can tell our own stories, and we need places like this.

We also need to preserve the history from whence we came.

And while we're often watered down, because that's why they're taking the books out of libraries and remove them from the school, the curriculum in the school.

I want to encourage people, as you said today, they have to go vote.

You have to vote.

This is why your legislation was held up with the millage.

Because of who we have presently in office.

This is why we have places used to mention H N E H where you have to try to get money, but you have to take out how do you take out the word black out of the African American history museum?

It just doesn't make sense because they want to tell our story.

So I am an advocate.

Please invite me in.

I am unapologetic when it comes to my race and where I stand.

And the people in our city.

I mean, we need places like Motown, the big contributor of Motown.

Now I'm hearing some people have rewrote the songs, rewrote the versions, but we know that original one stands still when it comes to our culture.

So when those places come up, and by this being a city owned property, I believe that we should fund and make room for it so that we can continue to expound and bring people in to our culture.

And I want to thank you first for before I leave for allowing me to have my inaugural at the Charles H.

Wright.

It was an amazing event.

We had over 300 people.

We filled it to capacity.

Now let me tell you, it wasn't free, but uh it was discounted.

Um I just want to say I really appreciate it when before you came before you joined the country.

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

So because we had a full council.

We only had two new members.

Only had two new members, so there wasn't like the red carpet was rolled out, but we continue to roll out our own red carpet because it was an uh an amazing challenge to get there, and we wanted the people in district five that had an opportunity to come and celebrate.

So, no, it's not discounted anymore.

Oh, sir.

But that was before.

And I just want to say thank you for that because a lot of people that came had not been there before.

They were a part of our community organizations.

There were some of our presidents and sit on boards in district five that actually came to witness.

So I am held accountable by many, many people in District Five to uphold this position.

Not just for African Americans, but for every single person, and that means nationality, sex, race, and and everything that encompasses the city of Detroit.

But this museum here, it is it is it is a uh a pilgrimage, a pillage for us that we've been able to bring our young people, and I encourage people to bring their grandkids.

They need a membership.

And that and the first one you had with the slave ship, that will forever go down in the memories.

It'll seize into your thought to your brain of the experience being brought here to the Americas.

And it need to be like a small room somewhere, but that just that it stays because that is the truth of people that died being brought here against their will.

People died coming here that were sold, and that is what tells the real story when we are discounted and even in Detroit.

I look forward to seeing our presence, our presence in the city of Detroit.

It is a shame that we do not have things that exemplify African Americans and black people in the city of Detroit that has held the top ranking population.

I think we're at number three right now.

It is sad to me that more things has not been brought forth to preserve our existence.

Thank you.

Uh President.

Sorry.

So on the membership piece, um, you know, um thinking about membership, that's really important for everyone to remember.

A lot of people ask us what they can do, they can become members, right?

Would be the most basic thing that anyone could do to help the museum at this moment.

What we know about membership as you know, professional museum folks is that it's not the organizations that have large deep pocket donors that survive.

It's the ones that have the most number of donors at any level.

Because when those institutions are challenged, those people then reach in and make sure that that organization survives.

And there's just a more of a volume of them.

But there are individual memberships.

I think they start at $50, I think at this point.

There are family memberships.

Those memberships also allow you to attend the African World Festival for free, uh, which we do have to charge for now.

Um, but members get into that free.

They get into a lot of events free discounts in the store, et cetera, a lot of advances to it.

But what it does, it is gives us a source of base income that we know is gonna come in every year, and it helps us to plan and survive and to get exhibits like uh Council and Woman Colloway is talking about when they're being offered two or three years ago, probably when those exhibits were offered to museums to host, right?

So that's really uh an important part of I think what we can encourage all of us to do right now is to become members for sure.

$50.

Yeah.

Um there are children memberships actually, are there still?

I'd have to look at it.

Yeah, we can send you all about we'll get you all the detail.

So I asked one question and it was my time around.

Just got I should have one other.

Uh I know you you have the GM Theater.

Yes.

Uh is there any ongoing uh financial commitment from GM?

Um I'm sure there was a early on investment, uh, but is there an ongoing commitment that uh GM uh plays a part role?

So GM, you know, uh gave an initial gift that created and underwrote wrote the creation of that space in the museum.

Uh when we uh did the remodel, where they basically matched a great portion of our ARPA funds that allowed us to then do the renovation.

I think it was a million-dollar gift from TM, which was just a few years ago.

Um they are ongoing supporters uh of the museum uh along with Ford and some of the other uh companies.

Um we are though, where I thought you were going, is we are starting to roll out a naming opportunity program.

Yes, right.

Um which will allow uh various facilities to be uh named after the donor, and we have one very large donor that is now two actually that are looking at guests that'll be naming guests after black folks in this named after black folks in our community who are stepping up in the seven-figure range to support the museum.

Um and so we hope to announce one of those fall spring.

Yes.

Um and those are ongoing.

We also have a seat campaign that's about to unveil where the seats in the theater uh you'll be able to underwrite um, you know, the purchase of a seat.

It won't be your seat, you won't be able to sit in there every time you come in, but there will be a seat in the theater with your name on it, and we can tell you where it is.

So yeah, we're doing that as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Any additional projects in it?

Any motions, any additional motions before we end this particular hearing?

All right.

Well, we want to thank you.

Any any final words?

Did we get the operating ask?

I hear a lot about capital.

Um, but we you know the operating ask is at 3.3 million.

It's it's the entire phase seven amount.

Uh for capital.

For capital.

I'm talking about the operating support piece is in addition to that.

Right.

Um I would one thing uh we have coming out is is that the Wright Museum is being recognized for its work in sustainability in the new um triple AM publication, which I believe just came out uh yesterday.

So we will secure some and make sure you get yeah.

I like to make oh uh we want to make sure you finish.

No, I'm sorry.

Yeah, did you did you did you okay?

3.3 for operating.

For operating.

I said so.

I like to make a motion for the 3.3 million that they're asking for for operating capital for the Charles H.

Wright Museum?

To be moved into executive session.

All right, colleagues, there's a motion on the floor.

Any objections?

Discussion.

With discussion, Member Johnson.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Through you to Pro Tim Young, is that just the delta between what's already in the budget for the operating?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Seeing none, that action shall be taken.

Thank you again.

We appreciate it, and we appreciate all the work that you've done over the years and look forward to continuing greatness.

And you all should have annual reports and things, packets that you all get these.

Get it all here.

Thank you so much.

All right, we'd now like to bring forward the Detroit Land Bank Authority.

You're supposed to have like scary mov music like queued up when the land bank comes in.