His story

Te Papa Chief Executive Rick Ellis has been in the job for more than half of his first 100 days. But has there been anything in the mainstream media about how he's planning to fix (or in Te Papa Chair Evan Williams words 'transform') the troubled museum? Um ... no. Quick to have a go at the last CE when things went wrong, even the Dominion Post has been strangely silent. So if and when NZ's media does decide to put the new CE to the test, here’s 10 questions they might like to ask him. Not at all, it's our pleasure.

1. At each business you've led you've pushed through major organisational changes and you've done it fast. What more needs to change at Te Papa?

2. Your previous experience has been in growth sectors (TV, telecommunications, IT) with a lot of investment. What does that experience tell you about Te Papa's future with restricted growth and limited investment?

3. You've endorsed Te Papa's vision to change hearts, change minds and change lives. How do you think a museum can genuinely change lives?

4. The Chairman of Te Papa has also said said Te Papa needed 'a shift in the culture of the organisation.' Given that the organisation has just come out the other end of a radical restructure, what needs to change?

5.   The last CE was criticised for picking exhibitions people didn’t want to see. What kind of exhibitions do you have in mind that will be more successful?

6. You've talked about using digital to transform Te Papa. So far Te Papa's digital presence seems to be a standard museum website and traditional interactives. What are your priorities over 2015 to transform Te Papa with digital?

7.   You're known for insisting on expertise. Will the current curatorial staff be able to produce the sort of digital content you envisage or will you need to hire new specialist staff?

8.   When can we expect to see some effects of Te Papa's digital transformation?

9.   Can you name a couple of museums in the world that have adopted the kind of digital focus you are proposing for Te Papa?

10.   What percentage of Te Papa’s funding do you think should be raised by Te Papa? Currently it's 46 percent. Can you give some examples of projects that will increase Te Papa's non-government income?

If I were King of Timbuktu ....

Imagine for a moment you're Rick Ellis and you've just been made CE of Te Papa. Whoops. Just kidding. Get up off the floor. After our pretty successful attempt at guessing the kind of person who would be picked as Te Papa’s next CE let's look at his track record and take a stab at what he's likely to do.

Ask questions. Ellis will quickly discover there's a big difference between what Te Papa claims to be doing and what’s actually going on. Basically it’s a kid's museum with scholarly pretentions, so an easy model to change so long as he doesn't get lost in the current echo chamber. Asking real questions and expecting real answers at Te Papa? Brutal.

Focus. The current mantra "Changing hearts, changing minds, changing lives" would suit a neighborhood bookstore just as well as Te Papa. Expect Ellis to take up the challenge and shift scale. The 200 (+ however many) staff of Te Papa makes it a giant in the cultural arena but in media and tech it's a minnow. As he’s done in the past look to Ellis to focus on attracting bigger audiences in the right demographics, and with no advertisers to satisfy. Brilliant.

Bring in some friends to help. It's what professional CEs always do. If he's only got three years to sort things out he's going to need help fast from people he knows can deliver. The current staff spend their time tip-toeing round in what's being called a 'toxic' culture. Rick Ellis is known to be impatient when he's slowed down by anything (especially the incumbent culture slowing things down). Watch for the rapid departure of top-level staff.

Play the game he knows. This is someone experienced in media production, communication and digital services. He'll see Te Papa as an under-utilised brand property with commercial potential as a digital platform. And why wouldn't he.

Play the game he knows Part II. Ellis is a money guy. He's going to expect return on the building and the assets. He believes in the logic of the market. Conventional museum shows don't bring in big profits (especially when you take into account the costs) so what's a new CE to do? Branch out, that's what.

Learn from the Giant Squid. No big secret that Te Papa’s most popular events have all been based on the cabinet of curiosities principle. More, bigger, stranger stuff. Bring on the society of the spectacle. 

Franchise, partner, whatever. Developing new stuff from the ground up takes too long and it's too expensive. The proposed movie museum and WETA are obvious targets for Ellis's media experience and connections. Peter Jackson’s skills can bring people and cash to Te Papa and Te Papa can put the Jackson story round the world with classy packaged exhibitions in premium venues. Born for each other. And Ellis will have many other friends in the entertainment culture industries to play with. He will be furious though about the mega Gallipoli exhibition being held in the old National Museum and Art Gallery and not on the waterfront at Te Papa. But what are the chances of the government changing NZ's remembrance date for him. Not high.

Go national. The drumbeat to serve the whole nation is sounding loud and clear. Sticking the lesser collections and a few classrooms in Manukau City was never going to do it. Talking digital and interactive isn't either but guess he'll figure out the ROI and problems with content soon enough.

Pull a rabbit out of the hat. Work out how to pay for a serious digital presence and not leave the current building as a run down brand-embarrassment? (see staff cuts below).

Cut staffing levels (duh) and move to part-timers for basic operational services. He's done it before. He definitely knows the way.

 Interrogate the scholarly staff and peer review their outputs. Move them out of the building, give them targets and genuine accountability. Threaten them with absorption into the tertiary sector as Plan B. Sorted.

Get all that pesky art stuff the hell out of the building.  There’s no money to be made on it and precious little thanks (Rick Ellis pauses, looks out his window at the old National Art Gallery building in the far distance .... hmmm … he thinks to himself .... maybe after that Gallipoli exhibition…..)

The even more anxious object

No one loves objects more than we do but it’s hard to avoid the thought that their domination of the visual arts might be on the decline. Invisible: art about the unseen 1957-2012 is an exhibition of absences at the Haywood Gallery in London curated by Ralph Rugoff. It feels like another twitch in this growing anxiety. The re-examination of the subject of objects (starting with whether more objects should even be added to the world’s load) is definitely heating up.

 It was in the breeze that wafted through four almost empty galleries in a work by Ryan Gander at Documenta, in Bruce Nauman’s sound piece Days at the ICA in London, and has been heralded for some time by the renewed fascination for non-object conceptual art of the seventies. It is also apparent in the growing concern of public art museums about storage overload in the face of their expanding collections i.e. objects as a management problem. And then there is all the talk about what objects mean to a generation living in its laptops.

We do live in an analogue material world of course surrounded by objects (shoes, buildings, forks and yes laptops) and there will always be artists who won't, or can’t, let the object go. (“I’m trying to capture the individual’s desire for the object” – Jeff Koons). While you can certainly count on the auction houses and dealers not going down without a fight there is a rising tide. Too many artists are challenging the centrality of objects, and the boundaries between subjects and objects, to think that we will avoid these traditional relationships unravelling.