Tacoma candy heir is hired to resuscitate museum

A Tacoma candy magnate and longtime arts booster has been hired to help revive the Bellevue Art Museum, which closed its new downtown museum last week in the face of mounting financial problems.

The museum's board Wednesday night chose Mark Haley as interim managing director, with the assignment to help devise a viable business plan that would garner widespread support from community leaders, potential donors and museum-goers.

"I'm a problem-solver," said the 52-year-old Haley. "I take sticky situations and try to make lemonade out of lemons."

In hiring Haley, the board is turning to the business world, tapping a man who spent 19 years at the helm of Brown & Haley, a Tacoma-based candy company controlled by the Haley family and best know for its Almond Roca Buttercrunch candy.

Haley will be the top employee for the museum, answering directly to the board. And board members are looking at him to play a pivotal roll in its attempt to reopen the museum.

Board President Rick Collette said Haley fit the bill as a person knowledgeable about the arts who could bring his business acumen to bear on the museum's woes.

"What we need was someone who understood those two environments, someone who wasn't strictly business and wasn't strictly art," he said.

The museum has been without a leader since early August, when Kathleen Harleman resigned as museum director in what she and board members have described as a disagreement over the museum's artistic direction.

In late September the board opted to close the $23 million building with virtually no warning, stating it was about to run out of cash.

Haley and Collette said the board knows the problems: a costly operation that relied on outside exhibits, combined with overly optimistic revenue projections that placed too great of a fund-raising burden on donors.

Now, Haley said, he will need to work with the board to come up with alternative ways to run the museum and talk with community leaders to learn what kind of museum they would support.

"We want to make sure that when we go out to the community that we have various proposals that we can receive feedback on," he said.

He said the board hopes to have a new plan by the end of December.

Museum leaders will gather feedback by meeting with groups of six or eight people representing different interest groups, such as business leaders, donors, artists and museum volunteers, Collette said. There is no plan for forums open to the general public.

Haley's job will last four to eight months, and he will be paid roughly $600 per day, Collette said. The museum then hopes to hire a permanent director to take over a revamped museum.

Haley led his family's candy company through an industry consolidation in the 1980s and '90s and oversaw its expansion in national and international markets. The Tacoma resident said he would use his knowledge of how to develop markets and customers as he works with the museum board and arts supporters.

"Art is a product and the Bellevue Art Museum is a brand. So a lot of skills that I have are skills an institution like this can use," he said.

Peter Donnelly, a leader in the local arts-funding world, praised the board's selection, saying Haley has a strong track record both in business and in arts organizations.

"I think a really first-rate businessman can take them through the challenges of organizing the museum," said Donnelly, president and CEO of ArtsFund, a Seattle-based organization that funds the arts through donations from companies and private foundations. Haley served on the ArtsFund board from 1983 to 1990, when it was known as the Corporate Council for the Arts.

Haley's status as an outsider — he said he had only glanced inside the Bellevue museum before being approached for the job — could serve him well, because he doesn't have a personal stake in the museum, Donnelly said.

"He's going to be objective about what's doable," Donnelly said.

Dick Swanson served with Haley on the board of Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, a program for glass artists. He said Haley displayed a gift for communicating with people with divergent views, including artists, art collectors and local arts supporters who all sat on the board.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com