The truth about magic is that it is a complex phenomenon that has been a part of human history for centuries. From ancient civilizations to modern times, magic has fascinated people and captured their imaginations. However, it is important to understand that magic is not real in the sense of supernatural powers. Magic tricks and illusions are a common form of entertainment that relies on the principles of psychology, misdirection, and sleight of hand. Magicians use these techniques to create the illusion of supernatural abilities such as levitation, mind reading, and disappearing objects. These tricks are carefully practiced and performed with precision to deceive the audience.
These tricks are carefully practiced and performed with precision to deceive the audience. Magicians often spend years honing their skills and mastering the art of illusion. They study the psychology of perception and use various tools and props to create their illusions.
Museum Director Becomes Lightning Rod for Discord : Science: Cutbacks, layoffs beset natural history institution. Retiring Craig Black defends 11-year record.
The memo was brief and to the point: The dinosaurs had to go.
The huge Camptosaurus and Allosaurus skeletons had been engaged in a death struggle in the foyer of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History for as long as anyone could remember. Now, said a February, 1993, memo from museum Director Craig C. Black, the dinosaur skeletons had to be dismantled to make room for a temporary folk art exhibit.
Like virtually every communication from the controversial director, the dinosaur memo was soon the talk of the staff. Some museum staffers feared that the move would damage the fragile skeletons, known to generations of visitors as the museum’s unofficial mascots. Worse, some saw their removal--now planned for later this summer--as part of a larger effort by Black to dramatically alter the 80-year-old institution.
Visitors to the venerable museum in Exposition Park or to its satellites in Burbank and at the La Brea tar pits may not suspect it, but the largest museum west of the Mississippi is in turmoil. And Black, who recently said he will retire after heading the museum for more than a decade, has become a lightning rod for suspicion and anger.
AdvertisementIn many ways, the problems plaguing the museum are familiar ones in recession-battered Southern California. Budget cuts and dozens of layoffs have stirred resentment and insecurity among employees. But there is a unique dimension to the labor strife at the museum that has heightened the hostility. For many who work there, the museum is a passion, not merely a job. In reordering the institution’s priorities, Black has sometimes trod heavily on their psyches.
The 61-year-old paleontologist has cut or eliminated programs that were dear to some staff members in an effort to devote more money and resources to areas in which he believes the museum has an opportunity to excel: specifically, a marine sciences program and the Robert E. Petersen Automotive History Museum, which is planned for the Wilshire district.
Critics say he has imposed his ideas on the museum--instead of seeking the counsel of the museum’s curatorial staff--and has used county-mandated budget cuts as an excuse to lay off staff members who did not share his vision. Under his reign, they say, morale has plunged. Instead of saying “hello,” many museum staffers greet one another in the hallways with, “You still here?”
By late last year, conflicts in the museum had become so severe that one museum volunteer asked for intervention by the County Board of Supervisors, which ordered an investigation by the auditor-controller’s office.
The resulting report, delivered last month to the supervisors just days after Black announced that he would retire by mid-1994, found that museum managers violated Civil Service rules during recent layoffs and failed to keep a complete inventory of the museum’s collections. But it did not find Black guilty of any serious wrongdoing.
Black and his supporters blame the grim atmosphere on dwindling resources and they dismiss most of the criticism as the grumbling of a few disgruntled employees.
Advertisement“I am very threatening to those people who have been here and maybe not done a hell of a lot prior to my arrival,” Black said in a rare interview. “My wife looks at me and says: ‘Goddamn it, Craig, you shouldn’t be so threatening to people.’ Well, unfortunately I guess that’s sort of what I convey. I do not particularly care for incompetence. I don’t care for laziness.”
Everyone agrees that Black will leave a very different museum from the one he found. Even the museum’s name and logo may change. A marketing expert, hired by the museum’s private fund-raising foundation at a salary of more than $100,000 a year, is seeking to replace the saber-toothed cat logo with an icon that will give the museum more “presence in the marketplace.”
Whoever replaces Black will probably inherit not only a new logo but a work force that is fractured and demoralized. “Some people want to believe it’s still one big happy family,” one staff member said. “It’s a dysfunctional family at best.”
Sitting in his office surrounded by dinosaur models and a saber-toothed cat skull, Black talked at length last week about his 11 years at the museum. He acknowledged that his decision to establish a niche in marine sciences--even if that means shifting resources away from such traditional disciplines as mammalogy, ornithology and botany--has upset people.
“But no natural history museum can do everything. Given the financial times . . . we really have to pick and choose,” he said. The increasing personal attacks have left him frustrated. “It’s been a wonderful first eight years and a hellish last two. . . . None of this is easy. I’m very fortunate I’m not prone to ulcers.”
Things looked much rosier in 1982, when Black--then president of the American Assn. of Museums--arrived in Los Angeles. After seven years as the director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Black said he was looking for a challenge. And the board of governors at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History gave him one.
“We wanted somebody with a national reputation. We wanted professionalism. We wanted somebody who could come up with the ideas for new halls, new displays, new areas to reach for,” said Richard S. Volpert, vice president of the board, who participated in Black’s selection. “In the case of Craig Black I think we got what we wanted. He was our first choice.”
From the start, Black set out to strengthen the museum’s private fund-raising efforts, launching a drive to attract donors and urging staffers to apply for federal grants.
“This museum was very much behind the times when Craig got here a decade ago,” said Janet Fireman, chief curator of history. “We weren’t raising money on the private side. . . . He brought (the museum) up into the ‘80s standards from the sleepy state it had been in before.”
Struck by the museum’s low profile, Black vowed to change its reputation as the “best-kept secret in Los Angeles.” Under his direction, annual attendance figures rose by more than 20% to 850,000. Black says that private funding of the museum, which totaled about $400,000 a year when he arrived, mushroomed to more than $5 million annually.
In 1984, Black moved to reorganize the way the museum was managed, merging the county-appointed board of governors with the trustees of the Natural History Museum Foundation, the museum’s nonprofit fund-raising corporation. County funding could not be relied upon forever, Black said. During his tenure, the foundation would play an increasing role in the museum’s operations.
With the permission of the museum board, Black traveled frequently to Kenya to consult on a museum there. He went to China and traveled around the United States to participate in conferences and committees. The museum’s worldwide reputation grew.
But back home, some staffers found Black lacking. His push for privately funded staff positions had created a two-tier system, some said, in which county employees felt less valued than foundation employees.
Although Black describes his leadership philosophy as “coming through consensus,” some staffers accuse the director of being autocratic.
“He was a very good scientist. I considered him a professional associate and friend before he came to the museum,” said David P. Whistler, who was curator of vertebrate paleontology until he was laid off this year. “I would have supported that man into hell early on.”
Instead, Whistler said, he watched with dismay as Black disbanded the curatorial assembly, an advisory body formed by the professional staff. Whistler said Black was “a top-down type” who gave the impression he was not interested in others’ views.
“What developed was an us-them mentality. The ‘them’ was the old-time curators. ‘Us’ were paid administrators and new young curators he brought in,” said Whistler, who is appealing his layoff to the Civil Service Commission.
A curatorial employee who requested anonymity because “my job is still on the line” agreed. Black’s “administrative style is arrogant and non-consultative, non-collegial,” the employee said. “He’s an elitist. He reports. He tells. But he never asks.”
Black admits that his strong personality may have sparked antagonism. But he insists that he has sought out varied views and made it clear his door was open to staffers. Looking back, he says, he would have done nothing differently.
At least one museum trustee believes that there were more than personality conflicts behind the staff complaints. The trustee said a museum director needs three qualities: scientific training, fund-raising ability and administrative skills. The last proved to be “Craig’s weakness,” the trustee said, and Black’s frequent absences from the museum exacerbated the problem.
“In his first five years he was absolutely outstanding and on top of everything, but in the last five years he seems to have spread his wings too far,” said the trustee, who asked not to be identified. “I’ve seen less mastery of detail.”
In more prosperous times, many believe, that would not have proved so destructive. But the past two years have been the worst of times. In January, 47 staff positions were cut, and more belt-tightening is expected--by the museum’s own forecast, the number of county-paid employees could soon be reduced again from 117 to 76.
And that is taking a striking toll. Headaches, stomach problems, muscle spasms and asthma attacks are among the maladies that some museum employees attribute to work-related anxiety.
Some staffers have volunteered at the museum since they were teen-agers, acquiring highly specialized skills that are difficult to transfer to non-museum jobs. And with lifetimes invested in the institution, many have a fierce loyalty to the 28 million specimens they are paid to tend and study.
“It’s not like working in a bank,” said Cindy Weber, the collections manager in herpetology, the section that studies reptiles and amphibians. “The people here who are on the front lines . . . are extremely dedicated, bordering on the passionate for the discipline they are in.”
With many fearing for their jobs, criticism of the administration was often delivered anonymously. A “Stray Animals” memo that ordered museum staffers not to feed abandoned dogs and cats in the museum parking lot prompted two bitter parodies last fall.
One spoof, sent out by the “Mismanagement Group” on official-looking stationery, announced the “first annual museum domestic animal hunt.” A second spoof, printed under the heading “Achtung!,” was more scathing.
“Commencing immediately, there has been appointed a Staff Dispatcher, whose job it will be to notify sharpshooters . . . to dispatch any staff seen straying in the parking lots,” it said. No one, it continued, should get “the mistaken idea that working here is, at least for some staff members, fun. . . Remember: Keep an eye on your fellow worker, because he’s keeping an eye on you!”
More recently, someone has begun circulating a letterhead with a proposed new museum logo affixed to the bottom: a screw.
Last week, as rumors circulated about further layoffs, Chief Deputy Director Mark Rodriguez received an anonymous death threat. As a precautionary measure, security staff began searching staff members’ purses and briefcases at the entrance.
Some staff members are galled that Black makes $96,000 a year from the county, supplemented by $85,000 from the museum foundation, which also provides Black and his wife with the use of a Hancock Park house and a luxury sedan. Staffers also question why county Safety Police shuttle the Blacks to the airport and why the couple travels first class--to the tune of about $185,000 over a two-year period, according to the recent county audit.
David Comsky, vice president of the museum foundation’s board of trustees, dismissed such complaints as silly griping.
“Why does Mike Eisner make $45 million a year? Different people have different stations in life. That’s how it is,” he said, adding that he feels Black has more than earned his keep. “I don’t think you could have the director of the museum living in a hovel, not going anywhere and taking a bus.”
To attract quality applicants, museum governors and trustees say, the museum must offer a competitive package of salary and benefits. When they begin looking for Black’s successor this fall, they say, that policy will not change.
But given the challenges facing the institution, some believe they must look for a candidate ready to stay closer to home and to place greater emphasis on management.
“It’s clear that we need the focus to be more administrative internally in the future,” said H. Frederick Christie, president of the board of trustees. “But I don’t look at that as a criticism of Craig Black. . . . We are redirecting our focus.”
Volpert, the trustees’ chairman, agreed.
In the upcoming search, he said, “the accent on fund raising and management will be higher than the accent on scientific expertise per se. That’s not to exclude the scientific. I’m saying the talent to keep us above water is going to be terribly important.”
In light of this, Catherine Krell, museum deputy director of marketing and public affairs, said many staff members should reconsider their harsh assessments of Black.
“I feel like saying: ‘Hey curators, you don’t know what you’ve got (in Black). The next director is going to be business driven, because we have to survive,’ ” she said. “We’ve got to change. Because the ‘90s are not (the) ‘80s. The money is not coming in the door.”
But if cuts force more layoffs, some employees wonder how much good change will do.
“Frankly, I don’t know how much . . . is going to be left in a year,” said one museum employee. “It’s going to be a building with 100 administrators administering each other.”
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