However, Scott Stover, a former international investment banker who is today one of the foremost strategic advisors in the art and philanthropy space, and host of the podcast, “Giving Back is Dead” (now launching its third season), believes that millennials are less interested in building and maintaining legacy art institutions, and more interested in democratizing a more diverse art world, and doing so in a way that makes a difference in the world. And that if institutions don’t respond accordingly, they are in danger of diminished support or becoming irrelevant.
Stover grew up in Chicago, and then attended Columbia University in New York where he received his BA and MBA. And it was at Columbia’s Junior year abroad program in Paris at Reid Hall, that Stover fell in love with French culture and thought, in particularly semiotics, which would be invaluable when it came time to parse how art institutions engage with their donors and patrons.
After graduating Columbia, Stover became an investment banker, working for Bank of America in their strategic planning department, which Stover describes as “the more intellectual, exciting part.” After two years there, there was an opening in their Paris office concerning French-speaking Africa, which Stover realized was “his ticket back to Paris.”
From his base in Paris, Stover would end up traveling throughout Africa, funding infrastructure projects in private and public partnerships. “It was a very, very interesting period.” From there, Stover traveled the world heading a team that worked on trading debt in emerging markets. Finally, Stover was given responsibility for “Special Situations,” an asset class where companies are having a problem which can, in some cases, be solved by restructuring the debt and equity.
Stover then led a Special Situations team for Westdeutsche Landesbank. This is where Stover really perfected his strategic approach of examining a project holistically, listening to the client and developing a strategy for them. “You have to look at the competitive environment in which you’re working, define the objectives, define the potential, and work with the entity so that they are successful,” Stover said.
As Stover was an American Banker in Paris (he eventually became a dual citizen with French citizenship), he became friendly with several of the curators and leaders at the Pompidou. At that time, Nicholas Serotta had breathed new vitality into the Tate Museum in London, and Stover was asked to develop a strategy for the Pompidou, which he was then asked to lead and implement. As part of that initiative, Stover revived the De Menil-founded American Friends of the Pompidou Center, which became, “a model of cross border philanthropy.” What Stover did for the Pompidou was so significant that France honored him by making him a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
The Pompidou’s curators, who saw art history through their own distinctive perspective organized a 2006 exhibition, “Los Angeles 1955-1985: Birth of an Art Capital” which rewrote Modern and Contemporary Art history in a more expansive way to make the case that as Paris was the Art Capital for the beginning of the 20th Century, and New York for the post-World War Two, moment, the axis was now shifting to Los Angeles. Stover listened to them and thought “Maybe they’re right.” And so, he decided to base his support organization and his strategic consultancy in LA.
Stover realized that the expertise he had developed in banking for helping companies in “Special Situations,” was very much needed by arts and culture organizations and not-for-profits. Stover applied “classic investment banking concepts” and challenged his Museum and Art world not-for-profits to develop their mission statement, to scrutinize their competition and determine what is good and bad, to take a look at their revenue streams and look at the institution holistically.
Stover launched his art consultancy, Scott Stover Inc, to work with collectors, corporations, not-for-profits, and cultural institutions to develop strategic plans.
As he surveyed the cultural landscape, Stover became concerned that cultural institutions have not been able to successfully engage with millennials – and it became clear to Stover that the traditional Art Museum philanthropy model has relied on an elitist concept of rarified access as a reward for donors whereas, in Stover’s experience, millennial collectors and patrons want Art to be democratized and to serve social good.
When California institutions asked Stover to explore why they were having difficulty engaging Silicon Valley, he asked them simply: Do you talk to them? So Stover advised they go listen and learn and then develop their engagement with Silicon Valley not based on the institutional giving model, but on what they could offer donors that would be meaningful to them. Issues that cultural institutions are now dealing with such as Diversity and Representation, Climate Change and Sustainability, Access and Public programs, are very much on the agenda for the Next Generation.
Stover feels that too many institutions spend on public relations events rather than investing in strategy. So, Stover began his podcast, “Giving Back Is Dead (GBID)” to engage millennial curators, collectors and artists. On his podcast, which just launched its third season, Stover has one-on-one in-depth conversations with millennials who are doing inspirational initiatives in arts and culture. Past conversations (which can be found here) have included Abby Pucker, Keith Rivers, Tiphaine Calmettes, Claude Grunitzky, Roya Sachs, Sébastien Montabonel, and Russel Tovey.
The first installment of the new season features a conversation between Stover and GBID podcast co-producer Vajra Kingsley of VHE.Art (for whom I have consulted) discussing the first two seasons and their vision for the upcoming season.
The larger idea animating Stover’s podcast, newsletter, and his art consultancy, critical to the continued sustainability of cultural institutions, not-for-profits, corporations and individual is, Stover said, “to identify those themes necessary to be able to continue to engage the next gen in order to assure that our cultural arts and science institutions continue to exist.”
