Andy Couch is the Executive Director of The Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, Wyoming. He spoke with Nick Thornburg over the phone in early March of 2021.
Nick Thornburg: Talk a little bit about your broad vision for The Nic. I know you came in during a pretty challenging time for the arts and for nonprofit institutions, so you’ve got a lot on your plate. What’s your thinking going into the next five years, ten years? What’s the big picture?
Andy Couch: When I got in the door here, [the priority] was how quickly can I build trust between my staff and my board. What are their goals? What are my goals? How can we achieve all of this together? How can I be a good leader in a place I’m unfamiliar with, in a really awesome position as the director of The Nicolaysen Art Museum?
I was pretty key on buy-in from my staff and my board and [I was] really picking their brains on what they wanted to achieve. After that, my vision is pretty simple in terms of a broad five, ten year plan. We want to engage with communities of interest. So we want to produce relevant content for more than just our attendants.
I see us becoming more relevant for groups that have never been to The Nic. Right now, my staff and I meet once a week to discuss ways we can be more engaging and more inviting and more inclusive. Those are really the bones of my vision.
NT: I think it’s really important to think about things in that way, especially in a state like Wyoming where we’re largely rural and spread out. We’ve got a lot of insular pockets here in the state, but if we want to build a stronger industry overall, we really need to find ways to reach out and engage and build those bridges so we can connect with other people. It seems like you’re doing that work at The Nic now.
AC: Right. Back in maybe 2015, somewhere around there, I got the opportunity to lead the largest outreach program in Oklahoma for Gilcrease Museum. We had all of these big rural pockets in Oklahoma and they were too far away from a major city to take a field trip. It was pointless. In the panhandle you could drive hours and then you’d have to stay the night, and rural schools can’t afford to do something like that. We created this concept that was like a traveling exhibit, almost a museum on wheels, an extension of the museum. I’d bring traveling exhibits to low income and rural areas that weren’t able to have those museum and art experiences. With that I was able to serve something like nineteen counties and about 9 thousand students.
NT: What was the response? I imagine it was something pretty special.
AC: Oh, it was amazing. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. It was an independent project. The museum gave me a lot of trust to manage all the scheduling, the creation of the exhibits, and then to [act as] the lead teacher. It was mainly for third, fourth, and fifth graders but the response was just amazing, because we were able to serve audiences that wanted to have the experience but couldn’t afford to or couldn’t make the drive because of the distance. So I think Wyoming has a lot of that as well. There’s so many little areas and smaller communities that I would love for us to be talking about art education in, and be able to bring the museum to their door. That’s a big mission of mine, and my vision for down the road. How successful can we be at involving those who would like to have the experience but can’t?
NT: That’s really important, especially in the arts, to be able to do that type of work. Creating the space and support structure here [in the state], and providing education and contact with the arts helps create a stronger community overall as well as a stronger arts community. And perhaps over time communities will be able to retain existing talent and foster it in a really special way.
AC: I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma and I still remember my first art teacher. I still remember my first art class. If it hadn’t been for the children’s museum experience I had or my grandma taking me to museums I don’t know if I would have been interested in the arts. I don’t know if I would have gone on to have a museum career. I think that regional art is definitely important. Some of the greatest artists get their start in these beautiful places throughout rural America. Would there be a Jackson Pollock without Cody, Wyoming?
NT: To shift the subject into the more immediate landscape—since we’re still very much in the middle of this pandemic, what are your thoughts about engagement in an environment where there’s a health crisis which makes it difficult to engage in the way we typically would? How are you approaching that particular challenge?
AC: We’re definitely in survival mode here at the museum. How we’re planning to keep engaged with our audiences and build new ones is through building out a virtual platform. We’re going to be hiring a director of communications hopefully this month, and with that videography is a big skill to have. We want someone who can record these experiences [visitors] could have at the museum, material that is not only educational but entertaining. We want to be able to function as the museum has in the past but virtually. And if not virtually, we’re looking to create smaller, more intimate events. For example, in collaborations and partnerships with other nonprofits, or other community partners, where we’re limiting our crowd size to 100 people. We’re trying to navigate our way through the pandemic and use it not necessarily as a crutch, but as something to strengthen the organization.
In a downtime like this our staff has more time to work on things they’ve never been able to work on because [previously] they’ve been so preoccupied with event planning and [other things] happening at the museum. This place has done well with event rentals in the past, especially throughout the summer. That really hasn’t been the case [this year], which is why we’ve suffered such a great loss. 70 percent of attendance being down due to a pandemic sends ripples throughout the whole organization. So if we do smaller things well, and we do more quality and less quantity, I think that we can end up on top. But I have to be able to offer Casper and the Wyoming community something that’s relevant to them and beneficial to them.
Right now we’re building out a spring break camp. What we thought would be such an interesting thing to do would be to provide studio visits to some of our favorite local artists here. So what we’ve done is visited Zak Pullen, Betsy Bower, Jim Kopp, and Georgia Rowswell at her residency out at Ucross. We filmed all these really interesting studios—they’re all so different, and they’re [using] different mediums as well. We asked them about their journey as an artist, what inspired them to do this as a career, how it’s going, and what kind of advice they were given growing up that helped them in their journey as an artist. They’re all so different and they’re all so successful in their own way, and we just hope these artists will inspire others. Through these visits you get to check it out and experience what it’s like in a Wyoming artist’s studio and then we bring you back to The Nic and the Discovery Center and we create a work of art or an activity that is inspired by this artist. So, for example, with Zach Pullen we’d be doing character development and drawing. With Jim Kopp we’re doing a series on creatures and monsters and mixed media. There are a lot of fun, attractive things for spring break camp that we can offer like that. [Participants] can pick up supplies curbside. They’ll get a password and a link to the videos. Is the community going to be receptive of that? Is that something they’re going to want to participate in? We’re going to find out if we can get more of these programs out for people at home, because we can’t have them all at once at the museum. That’s what the vision is for the next six months, or at least until the end of 2021. We definitely want to be connecting with new audiences, people who’ve never been here or heard of The Nic. We need to be providing things for everybody. We need to be inclusive.
NT: It sounds like the pandemic has provided an opportunity to think creatively.
AC: I think that we’re more focused and getting more done than we ever have. I want people to know that we’re a space for our community to create in. My background is collaboration and partnership heavy, and so I’m really interested in developing new partnerships within the community that we haven’t had or maybe need to bring back.
Learn more about what The Nicolaysen Art Museum has to offer by visiting their website.
Support Regional Arts Coverage!
The Featured Artist and Conversations series were conceived as a way to showcase the stories of artists and creative people residing in the regional West while contributing to a wider conversation about creativity and the world of art.
To ensure this work continues, please consider supporting it.
Your contribution provides vital assistance and serves to demonstrate your appreciation for the work regional artists and creative people do to keep our communities vibrant and full of imaginative light.
If you enjoyed this arts coverage, donate below to keep the content coming! Learn more about becoming a supporter.
Become a Patron Without Spending a Dime. Learn More Here.
To be featured in an upcoming Featured Artist article or Conversation—or to nominate someone —please Contact Me.
Nick Thornburg is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. Follow Nick and share the work on social media. Subscribe to his mailing list to keep up-to-date with upcoming features and other news.
Stay Creative.