Oct. 14—Silvia Filippini-Fantoni says a trio of happenstance instances ultimately brought her to The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg.
"Sometimes you have to read the signs," said Filippini-Fantoni, a native of Italy who for the past two decades has worked with museums in Europe and the United States.
She is the latest Richard M. Scaife Director/CEO at the Greensburg museum. Just prior to taking this post in August, she was deputy director of learning and engagement at the Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey.
Filippini-Fantoni said the first sign indicating a move to Greensburg made sense was hearing about a museum directorship opportunity from a friend of Judy O'Toole, who led The Westmoreland for 25 years, retiring in 2018.
Then, Anne Kraybill, who was Filippini-Fantoni's immediate predecessor at The Westmoreland and is a previous acquaintance of hers, "popped into my LinkedIn feed," she said.
Finally, she heard from a recruiting company seeking deputy director candidates for a larger museum.
She responded that she was "not interested in a parallel move to a larger institution. If I would think of the next step for me, I would probably think about being a director at a small institution."
That's when the recruiter additionally mentioned the leadership opening at The Westmoreland.
"That was the third sign that was coming my way, so I had to listen," she said.
She won the Greensburg job and has found it to be a perfect fit.
The Westmoreland, she said, is "an incredible gem in a small city. I want to work for a museum that values their relationship with the community and wants to strengthen that relationship.
"I'm interested in creating long-term relationships with people, with the museum playing a larger role in the community — a place for wellness and education and entertainment, a place where you gather with your loved ones and a place that can have a role in the revitalization of the community. This place really checked all those boxes for me."
Helene Conway-Long, who is president of the Westmoreland museum's board of trustees, led a committee overseeing a national search that resulted in Filippini-Fantoni's hiring.
"She's the right fit: the right person at the right time," Conway-Long said. "We think it's mutually beneficial."
She said the first-time CEO will have the opportunity to build upon The Westmoreland's "solid reputation in the art community" while bringing to the job "a good strategic vision. She's generationally bringing a new perspective and a more worldly perspective. She's very accessible and hands-on.
"She'll be bringing a lot of new ideas to the table. She can really learn a lot and put her stamp on what we're doing here."
"Silvia has the perfect mix of vision, analytical skills, ambition and passion for her work," museum board Vice President Stephen Yslas said. "She believes in the important role and powerful positive impact museums play in communities."
Surrounded by art
Filippini-Fantoni was surrounded by art and history growing up in the city of Bergamo in northern Italy.
Until her early teens, she lived in Bergamo's original Upper Town — a neighborhood surrounded by a wall constructed in the 16th century.
"It is a pretty incredible place to grow up," she said. "I was very fortunate. My elementary school was a 13th-century convent with beautiful frescoes everywhere."
She earned a master's degree at the University of Milan — in history, her first love.
But her emphasis shifted when she signed on in 2001 for a research project at Maastricht University, in the southern tip of the Netherlands.
"I really focused on the way technology could be used in museums," Filippini-Fantoni said. "That was a fairly new field at the time.
"I figured out in the process that museums were a much better fit for me. I had always gone to museums as a child. Also, I'm a social person. I think just being an academic or a researcher didn't have that sort of connection with people."
In the next phase of her career, she worked either at museums or for private-sector consultants serving them.
She worked on web projects for the Louvre and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She also managed creation of a multi-language, multimedia guide for visitors to the British Museum.
In 2011, Filippini-Fantoni crossed the Atlantic to join the staff of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where she remained for about five years.
"They created a job for me," she said. "I was managing technology-based interpretive projects."
After increasing the scope of her responsibilities in Indianapolis and serving more than two years as director of programs and audience engagement at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, she joined the Newark museum in October 2019 — just months before the arrival of the covid-19 pandemic.
Working through that challenge, Filippini-Fantoni focused on increasing engagement with the Newark community and growing the diversity of the museum's audience.
She said emphasizing programs was an effective tool for attracting new people to the Newark museum and believes it can be equally valuable at The Westmoreland.
New strategic plan
As the Greensburg museum's current strategic plan nears its end in 2024, she said she's looking forward to being involved in development of a successor plan, charting a course for the museum over the following several years.
"It's not just my vision," she said. "With input from the community, the museum staff, the board and donors, we need to get to a vision that everybody can feel they can be behind."
Reflecting a trend that has affected museums across the nation, Filippini-Fantoni said annual admissions at The Westmoreland, including virtual visitors, recently have been between 18,000 and 18,500 — down from as much as 25,000 before the pandemic.
Her goal is to rebuild admissions to match and possibly surpass the pre-pandemic total by the 2024-25 fiscal year.
To help with that process, she's hoping the museum can complete a market research analysis, "to see what geographic areas and what segments of the population we can drive to the museum and what experiences we might have to adjust ... to tweak what we are already doing."
In the post-pandemic world, she noted, the funding landscape for museums has changed. "A lot of foundations have shifted their interest to human services and health care," she said. "That's a big change for us."
Filippini-Fantoni suggested The Westmoreland might build upon its offerings for families, which include its series of Sunday Fun Day programs. Since the easing of pandemic-related restrictions, she said, she'd like to reinstate interactive activities for families on a regular basis — "where kids can touch things and have fun; where kids can make things and be creative."
She said she wants to increase the museum's appeal to members of the millennial and Gen Z generations. To that end, she's begun conversations with local colleges and universities and hopes to "create opportunities by partnering with organizations that are already attracting these audiences," such as the Greensburg Night Market.
Beginning in 2018, The Westmoreland began offering free admission to the museum, replacing its previous suggested donation from visitors. Filippini-Fantoni said there has been no discussion about ending free access to the museum's permanent collection, but she didn't rule out the possibility of a special entrance fee for a visiting exhibition that might be particularly costly to host.
She said free access goes hand-in-hand with the goals of growing the number of admissions and reaching out to new audiences.
"I think it's important to remove as many barriers as possible to admission," she said.
Filippini-Fantoni also wants to continue the museum's efforts since 2015 to broaden its collection, to include more post-1950s art and pieces by female artists and artists of color.
"I think that we will continue this focus," she said, noting the more recent acquisitions have brought new perspectives to the collection. "It creates a dialogue between the past and the present. It helps us to see how the world has changed or sometimes not changed."
Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jeff by email at jhimler@triblive.com or via Twitter .
