Mark Tullos serves as the executive director of the LSU Museum of Art, one of the South’s largest university-affiliated art collections, with roughly 6,000 works. Before his return to his home state, Tullos acted as the founding president and CEO of the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience in Meridian, Mississippi.
He has also served as the assistant secretary for the Louisiana Office of State Museum, director of the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans and founding director of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art.
We’re two weeks into the new school year at LSU. What is the LSU Museum of Art looking forward to?
Mark Tullos, newly appointed executive director of the LSU Museum of Art
We’re coming out of one of our most successful years we’ve seen in a decade. The museum met a lot of challenges over the past 10 years with COVID and budget cuts, but last year, we managed to achieve a lot of things that were long overdue, including our reaccreditation by the American Alliance of Museums. Now, we’re preparing for even bigger things this next year.
How has the museum had to pivot its approach to funding with the current budget cuts?
First, LSU has been stalwart in their support for the museum. They’ve not budged from what they contribute to our operations, which is about 42% of our budget. The rest of the budget we have to raise privately through grants, membership and donations.
A lot of our grants that come through local sources like the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge and the Louisiana Division of the Arts are all supported by the National Endowment for the Arts indirectly, which is now being eliminated. So we’re looking for other ways to create self-generated funding through fundraisers and things of that nature.
Clouds roll past the LSU Museum of Art and the Mississippi River late on Saturday, July 6, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
What are some of the big events that you’re preparing for in the coming years?
This year, we are launching the museum’s first-ever annual fundraiser, Southern Palette, a food and drink experience downtown. People can visit southernpalette.org to see the guest chefs who are coming in throughout the South on March 21. People can come and taste very unique, award-winning samples from each of the chefs.
We’re trying to rebuild our website to make our collections accessible to the public. As a scholar, you’ll even get a level of access where you can go in and see the collection and study certain things that the general public can’t.
The next piece is our effort to expand our collaboration with the university and the college students. We’re employing more student workers and graduate students than we have before. We’re also developing more programs and partnership with various departments on campus to impact student education. On the other end, we’re working with the public schools and educators to provide access for opportunities here on our campus at the Shaw Center.
A lot of people don’t realize that exhibition planning takes a long time. We have one program that’s three to four years out. In 2026 and 2027, we’re working on a major exchange with an artist in Cuba that we’ve been working on for two years.
Madison Callegan helps her son, Rhett, color a bus alongside Rylee Vann during Toddler Thursday at the LSU Museum of Art on Thursday, August 1, 2024.
Why was it important to earn reaccreditation from the American Alliance of Museums?
Out of roughly 33,000 museums in the United States, only about 1,000 of them are accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. What that means is the museum has gone through a process of self study and examination for at least one year in upgrading their policies, procedures, organization, ethics policies and education programs to a level that is best practices in the industry.
After you strive to improve in those areas, a team of reviewers from peer institutions visit on behalf of the American Alliance of Museums, which is our membership organization.
The last time we were accredited was back in 2007, so we had to review all those qualifications. A team came to Baton Rouge, and we passed with flying colors.
LSU Museum of Art Director Mark Tullos, Jr. browses books in the Louisiana collection at the State Library of Louisiana on Monday, July 1, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
How do the arts build community and create solutions in a city?
This is a really important conversation to have right now because of the recent challenges museums are facing with censorship. In 2021, the American Alliance of Museums hired an independent research firm to conduct a survey, and they discovered that 9 out of 10 Americans found museums more trustworthy than any institution in the United States, just below their family members.
Above their churches and educational institutions, they believed in museums.
I think it’s because we’ve cherished, for decades now, that when we mount an exhibition, we should be unbiased, and we need to bring the facts. We may not like the history, what the artist might be saying or what the scientific discovery was, but it’s the fact. People rely on museums for that information, exposure to opinions, ideas and freedom that we have to express and exhibit those things.
People come to us because they want to be challenged with new ideas, or they want to learn what the truth is about ourselves. Museum are really central to our American story. Our democracy is founded on that principle of truth.
