{"id":29489,"date":"2015-08-06T18:52:42","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T00:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=29489"},"modified":"2015-08-06T21:57:01","modified_gmt":"2015-08-07T03:57:01","slug":"lynnette-hiskey-leaves-utah-division-of-arts-museums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/lynnette-hiskey-leaves-utah-division-of-arts-museums\/","title":{"rendered":"Lynnette Hiskey Leaves Utah Division of Arts & Museums"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lynnette<\/a>

Lynnette Hiskey<\/p><\/div>\n

On Monday, Lynnette Hiskey stepped down as Director of the Utah Division of Arts & Museums after two years in the position. She previously had served as the department\u2019s assistant director and was promoted to the new position after Margaret Hunt resigned in 2013.<\/p>\n

Hiskey\u2019s departure was sudden and unannounced.<\/p>\n

When the Department of Heritage & Arts was contacted, Communications Director Geoff Fattah responded with the following statement: \u201cLynnette Hiskey resigned as director of the Utah Division of Arts & Museums on Monday, August 3, 2015.\u00a0 Lynnette was a dedicated advocate for arts and museums in Utah and can point to many successes during her time as assistant director and director of the division.\u00a0 The Utah Department of Heritage & Arts will be commencing a nationwide search for a new director of the Division of Arts & Museums in the coming weeks.”<\/p>\n

Reached at her home Thursday, Hiskey said that during a performance review on Monday she was told, \u201cIt\u2019s just not working.\u201d When she asked why, Department of Heritage & Arts Executive Director Julie Fisher simply responded, \u201cWe\u2019re going to go in a different direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hiskey\u2019s was an \u201cat will\u201d position, in which terms for dismissal are not required for termination. During the review, a Human Resources representative told Hiskey she had the option to resign or be terminated.<\/p>\n

Tom Alder, who sits on the board of the Division of Arts & Museum\u2019s Utah Arts Council, said he was \u201csurprised.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve always liked working with Lynnette and her staff and thought she did a great job. I\u2019m saddened that she\u2019s leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n

When contacted for comment, individual staff members at the Division of Arts & Museums replied with the Department of Heritage & Arts\u2019 official statement. But former staff member Wendi Hassan, who left earlier this year to become executive director at the Cache Valley Center for the Arts, said there have been ongoing tensions between the division\u2019s staff \u2014 professionals trained in their fields \u2014 and the politically-appointed managers who run the larger Department of Heritage & Arts (Director Julie Fisher was previously a four-term state legislator; Deputy Director Brian Somers was previously a speech writer for Gov. Gary Herbert and a congressional staffer). \u201cThere\u2019s a total disregard by management for the qualifications of these people doing their jobs [at the Division of Arts & Museums], and for the constituency they are supposed to be serving,\u201d said Hassan.<\/p>\n

John T. Nielsen, a\u00a0former\u00a0member of the Arts Council Board, called Hiskey a “valuable and loyal employee” and said her \u201cforced departure\u201d was a \u201ctremendous loss to the entire arts community of the state.”<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, the arts and politics sometimes don’t mix well,” he said via e-mail. “I believe Lynnette was a casualty of that divergence. There has been tension for over a year regarding Lynnette’s defense of her staff, views of artistic expression, and funding issues that have often clashed with the views of her superiors at the Department.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hiskey said that while she felt she had a great relationship with her staff, she may not have been appreciated by her bosses. \u201cI will speak up and voice my opinion and they\u2019re not happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hiskey said it seemed in several instances the Department of Heritage & Arts was more interested in giving money back to the Legislature than in spending it on their mission. She also experienced micromanagement to an extent she\u2019s never before seen in her professional career. \u201cYou\u2019re beating your head against a brick wall just to get one small thing approved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Issues may have come to a head during the most recent legislative session. With the help of a lobbying grant from Western States Art Federation (WESTAF), Hiskey said she was attempting to secure $200,000 from the State Legislature to provide much needed shelving for the state\u2019s fine art collection. Since those funds were not part of the governor\u2019s budget, her superiors asked her to pull the request. Which she did. Legislators decided to go forward with the appropriation nonetheless. In response to the incident, Hiskey received what she described as a \u201creally nasty letter of reprimand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hiskey\u2019s departure comes at a time when the Division appears to be doing quite well.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve never been more successful than in the last year,\u201d Hiskey said. The division\u00a0was able to reinstate a Museums staff position and a Folk Arts manager, and created a marketing and branding position that has been instrumental in giving the department a unified look. At the most recent Mountain West Arts Conference, hosted by Hiskey\u2019s department, NEA Chairman Jane Chu was the keynote speaker; and in October the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies\u2019 Leadership Institute is coming to Salt Lake City for their annual conference. \u201cOther states are coming to see what we\u2019ve been able to do,\u201d Hiskey said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Director Julie Fisher and Deputy Director Brian Somers of the Utah Department of Heritage & Arts both declined to be interviewed for this article.)<\/em><\/p>\n

CORRECTIONS: We originally stated that John T. Nielsen was a current member of the Utah Arts Council Board. Nielsen’s term expired in July.<\/p>\n

We received the following from Julie Fisher, via Geoff Fattah, shortly after going to press:
\n“Our staff at the Division of Arts & Museums are talented and dedicated professionals, and we look forward to working collaboratively with them, and with a new director, as we move forward.\u00a0 The public programs and services that our staff provide are critical to the arts and museum communities in Utah, and the Department of Heritage & Arts is committed to ensuring that our staff have the resources and support they need as they continue finding new and innovative ways to serve their customers.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, Lynnette Hiskey stepped down as Director of the Utah Division of Arts & Museums after two years in the position. She previously had served as the department\u2019s assistant director and was promoted to the new position after Margaret Hunt resigned in 2013. Hiskey\u2019s departure was sudden […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,33,9],"tags":[1462,1958],"class_list":["post-29489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-15-bytes","category-comings-goings","category-public_issues","tag-lynnette-hiskey","tag-utah-division-of-arts-museums"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/lynnettehiskey.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 11:42:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29489"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29509,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29489\/revisions\/29509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}