About the new name for that big museum at the end of the Parkway: Never mind.
Four months after rolling out a new name with great fanfare, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is once again calling itself the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum’s board Wednesday afternoon voted unanimously at a special meeting to scrap the name Philadelphia Art Museum, which had been announced Oct. 8 as part of a larger rebranding.
Some signs and materials are being quickly changed over with the old-new name, while others will be reprinted or revamped in coming weeks. The new PhAM acronym used in marketing materials will be dropped, and the museum will once again refer to itself in shorthand as the PMA, as many Philadelphians long have.
Why the retreat?
In short, the new name was widely disliked.
The museum spent the past several weeks surveying opinions, said director and CEO Daniel H. Weiss, and “I think what we learned from our survey, and it’s not surprising, is that people who have any knowledge of the institution — donors, staff, trustees, members — they know the name and it resonates with them. It’s something distinctive, it’s who we are. And changing the name for no obvious reason created a sense of alienation and didn’t make sense to a lot of people.”
Philadelphia Museum of Art had been the name of the nearly 150-year-old institution for 87 years until the change this fall.
The museum will, however, keep visual elements of the larger rebranding — the logo that echoes one of the griffin figures along the roofline of the museum’s main building, and bold fonts in signage and promotional materials.
As for the continued use of slightly irreverent tag lines that came with the rebrand — phrases like “Youse should visit more often,” — “Probably not so much,” said Weiss. “We will modify those a little downstream, but the idea is to return to a slightly more aligned presentation more closely tied to our mission.”
The rebranding — which was widely, though not universally, criticized upon its rollout — was a major initiative of former director and CEO Sasha Suda and marketing chief Paul Dien.
When the museum announced the name change, Suda explained it by saying that it was “truly a reflection of what the community has called it for a long time,” and that it was “also a sort of significant way of starting a new chapter and saying, ‘Look, we’re definitely starting a new chapter here.’”
Dien left the museum as of Feb. 1. Suda was fired Nov. 4 and, after filing a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the museum, was ordered on Friday by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas to settle the matter behind closed doors through arbitration rather than in a public trial.
The decision around the controversial rebranding is the first visible test of Weiss’s leadership, and he chose the route of inquiry and shared responsibility, directing a nine-member task force to assess its reception. The original rebrand was launched after multiple internal meetings, but without final notification to the board, according to one trustee.
In a 3½-page note to staff Wednesday afternoon announcing the decision to keep the logo and reverse the name change, Weiss noted the “siloed process” in which the original rebrand was developed, and took pains to emphasize how the reconsideration of it has been, and will be, different.
“The work of the design team over the past two years was exhaustive, incorporating decades of museum history into their thinking and interviews with dozens of staff and trustees. Yet, the team did not have the benefit of a broad, interdisciplinary group to inform the work along the way, so when the final product was rolled out, many felt surprised or not sufficiently invested in the outcome,” the note reads.
A series of internal meetings with staff will explain the task force’s findings, Weiss wrote in his note.
“The task force did consider reverting completely to the prior brand, but ultimately felt strongly that the original reasons for the rebrand are compelling. It was time for the museum to update its look, and the griffin logo is a strong statement that can successfully strengthen and widen our audience.”
Surveys conducted in recent weeks revealed findings that “went in two very different directions,” Weiss wrote. “Staff, trustees, and members were opposed to the name change, the URL, and the look of the new brand, yet the public reacted positively to the new logo and overall look and feel.”
Art Museum fan Brian Forsyth, of Exton, said he felt “blindsided by the sudden and uncalled for rebrand,” and when it happened, he asked for (and received) a membership refund.
He disliked the rebrand in general and said that, while he sometimes called it “the art museum,” he mostly referred to it as “the PMA.”
“When they took that phrasing away from me, it hurt,” he said.
Now that the museum is changing its name back, he says he intends to restore his membership.
“I will not, however, purchase any of the new merch. I still have my classic PMA baseball cap, which I will wear into the ground, literally,” he said.
Weiss said that the museum will not be disposing of current materials printed with the Philadelphia Art Museum name, such as brochures or maps. Rather, the change will be cycled through as items need to be replaced.
Gretel, the Brooklyn firm that designed the rebrand, is working with the museum on the current modifications.
The rebrand cost the museum about $1 million, Weiss said, and the total cost of the change-back may not exceed $50,000.
“The idea is to do this as cost-effectively as we can.”
Weiss called the entire rebrand episode “an unnecessary distraction for us. We want to move on and focus on things that matter most to our mission.”
