The following is an excerpt from PR NEWS' "The 12 Hottest (And 7 Not So Hot) PR Campaigns of 1996." This story looks at how the National Gallery of Art impressively handled the federal government's shutdown in 1996, which resulted in the closing of the highly celebrated Vermeer exhibition several times.
Among the criteria we probed for the analysis was how effective its spokespeople were and how timely it was in responding to the dilemma.
For five years, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. lobbied to get 21 paintings by artist Johannes Vermeer, one of the most revered painters of the 17th century, for the first major exhibition devoted to this Dutch artist.
And by 1995, after it had secured those paintings, gallery staffers were in the midst of publicity efforts revolving around what art critics believed would be one of the most important exhibits of this century. Everything seemed perfect, until the federal government shut-down in 1996, during the exhibition.
We gave high ratings to this campaign for both the way it promoted the exhibit and the way in which it handled a major crisis.
For Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., the gallery curator who oversaw the exhibit, it was one of the most significant moments in his career. And for art lovers worldwide, it was something to wait for: a rare glimpse into the creative mind of a classicist. But for PR professionals, and for PR NEWS, the Vermeer exhibit is more than a milestone in 20th-century art assemblage; it is a prototype for effective community/customer relations.
Little did those who toiled long and hard - even setting up a press trip to Delft, The Hague and Amsterdam so journalists could see where Vermeer had lived and worked - know that the exhibit would end up calling for crisis communication skills when the event was closed because of the shutdowns. During the exhibition, which opened at the beginning of November in 1995 and closed in February 1996, the gallery was shut down on six different occasions, many times for several days. But despite the political fray, the National Gallery never lost sight of its mission.
Effectiveness of Spokespeople
It has been more than a year since the Vermeer exhibit came and went, but its impact is one that most in the Washington, D.C., community aren't likely to forget. During the height of the exhibit, which opened Nov. 6, 1995, The Washington Post published several photographs showing long lines of people who waited for hours to get inside to see the widely-publicized exhibit. It was an art event with which the media, not only in the nation's capital, but all over the country, remained captivated.
The exhibit, which was organized by the National Gallery in tandem with the Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, The Hague, was especially significant because only 35 of Vermeer's paintings exist today. Conveying that was part of what gallery spokespeople were charged with doing during the preparation stages and as part of the PR planned for the event.
And that message was something the National Gallery yearned to convey early on during publicity efforts, which began a year prior to the exhibit opening. In press releases, Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, was quoted as calling the exhibition "a once-in-a-lifetime event."
Timeliness of Message
There is no debate as to whether gallery staffers were timely in the way they handled the PR for the exhibition, but what was key was how they worked with the media. Based on a review of gallery records, the April 20-24, 1995, press trip to the Netherlands could be considered a success simply based on the journalists who had been invited and accepted: writers were from the Toronto Sunday Sun, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, The New York Times, all target media organizations the gallery needed on its side.
Establishing a rapport with these publications - for guaranteed longlead stories - was part of the PR campaign.
Overall, the gallery had sent about 3,500 press kits to journalists worldwide around the time of the press junket. But little did gallery staffers know that setting up a tour would become an accomplishment that would become dwarfed by what transpired later. Just several days after the highly lauded exhibit opened, the federal government shutdown hit.
"Before the first federal shutdown in November, Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring was becoming the cover girl of choice for many magazines," according to a Gallery statement. "Leading critics extolled the exhibition as 'breathtaking'.by the time the gallery closed for a second time in December, the exhibition had become the media poster child of the federal shutdown."
In the end, Ziska said, the exhibit was re-opened because of funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation of Pittsburgh. By that time, the exhibit had been so widely publicized and had stirred such a public passion that the gallery knew it had to consider any possible route it could to see that the show went on. And by then, gallery employees knew that the exhibit would be one of the most press-generating events (other than the King Tut exhibit) in the gallery's history. A press breakfast held a week before the unveiling attracted 250 journalists, when 80 would typically attend, said Ziska.
Media Reaction
It is nearly impossible to recount all the publicity garnered by the exhibit, but here is a brief look: The New Yorker, The New York Times, House Beautiful, Town & Country, Life, "CBS's Sunday Morning," PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and The Wall Street Journal.
The Vermeer exhibit shows how a story can have arms and legs and set off a domino effect of reactive journalism and how timely responsiveness - in this case, gallery execs knowing they had to find a way to keep the exhibit open - counts for everything. Just imagine how this exhibit of the century would have been remembered had there not been efforts to re-open it. That's the kind of tale reporters and editors don't let go of easily.
Ziska said that more than 30 camera crews from network, syndicated and local TV outlets and photographers and writers from major news services and newspapers covered the re-opening. Ziska also remembers having 35 voice mails on the morning of the re-opening and being swamped with media questions. And by the time the numbers had been tallied up, 327,551 people had seen the exhibit. (202/842-6353)