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February 20, 2023 Arts Biz

After pandemic, vandalism spree, Hartford’s Mark Twain House looks to recovery, future growth

Robert Storace Executive Director Pieter Roos inside the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford.
By Robert Storace

Like many museums around the country, Hartford’s Mark Twain House & Museum has spent the last year-plus trying to recover from the pandemic, which forced the Farmington Avenue arts institution to close for nine months. 

The road back hasn’t been easy. The museum’s  attendance last year totaled around 50,000 visitors, still below the 70,000 people who visited each year pre-pandemic. 

And in an industry where margins are slim, any out-of-the-ordinary expense can prove financially troublesome. 

In December and early January, the Mark Twain House, which houses 16,000 artifacts, was hit by vandals in three separate incidents. Rocks and bricks broke windows causing $20,000 in damages.

Luckily, online donors stepped in. A GoFundMe campaign raised more than $28,000, covering repair costs. 

Mark Twain House Executive Director Pieter Roos said he hopes donors’ generosity is a sign of further recovery ahead, as he gets ready to unveil a new three-year strategic plan that aims to increase the museum’s endowment and visibility on a national and international level.

Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote seven books in the Hartford home’s third-floor billiards room, during what many considered his most creative period in the late 1800s, Roos said.

Items on display at the property — which includes Twain’s former 11‚500-square-foot, 25-room home and a 28,000-square-foot museum — include the famed author’s last pair of spectacles, a typesetting machine, photos of Twain and his family and first editions of his books.

“Mark Twain lived in Hartford for 17 years and, while we don’t think of Hartford as a major publishing center, it was at the time,” Roos said. “This was his house and we need to do everything we can to better market and (entice) people to come here and see his writings and his work.”

Pandemic’s impact

Roos spent 18 years as the executive director of the Newport (Rhode Island) Restoration Foundation before being named executive director of the Mark Twain House and Museum in 2017.

During his first two years in Hartford, his main focus was on raising $3.1 million for the restoration of the Twain House, he said. 

Executive Director Pieter Roos outside the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford.

And then COVID-19 hit and changed everything, forcing the museum to close for months and institute staff furloughs and pay cuts. 

Today, the arts nonprofit employs 21 full-time workers and about 50 part timers, Roos said.

Government rescue funds — totaling $1.2 million from the Paycheck Protection and Employee Retention Tax Credit programs — helped keep the museum afloat during the pandemic. 

“That money helped us to survive,” the 63-year-old Roos said.

Raising revenues, profile

Moving beyond the pandemic, Roos said he’s looking at both short- and long-term changes to boost the museum’s growth and financial well-being. 
 
The immediate goals include increasing attendance and earned revenue. That means continuing to offer top-notch programming that sells tickets (the museum charges $10 per person, while school children can attend for free). 

Roos said he wants to double the museum’s annual $40,000 marketing budget by conducting a joint campaign with the neighboring Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.

In addition, the museum has started to market itself through organizations like the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau in Massachusetts and Connecticut Office of Tourism. 

“Marketing can be a difficult task for a nonprofit because we simply don’t have a lot of money to do it,” Roos said. 

Other revenue-generating efforts include starting to charge $5 per person for virtual programming that was launched during the pandemic. 

More than 60,000 people have watched the museum’s virtual programs, which included talks with American writer Jodi Picoult, New York Times writer and author Maggie Haberman and actor Harvey Fierstein.

Similar programs are offered in person. For example, author and newspaper columnist Sean Dietrich recently visited the Twain House to discuss his latest book, “Sean of the South.”

Corporate events and facility rentals — other revenue generators — are also picking up, Roos said. 

Earned revenues, including ticket and gift shop sales, make up about 48% of the museum’s current $2.8-million budget, according to the nonprofit’s Chief Operating Officer Michael Campbell. The rest is raised through private donors and state and federal funding sources. 

In calendar 2022, the Mark Twain House reported a surplus, primarily due to federal funding, Campbell said.

One of the museum’s largest individual donors has been best-selling mysteries and thrillers author David Baldacci, who, along with his wife, gifted the Mark Twain House more than $1 million in 2019.

Other top donors include The Hartford, Travelers Cos., Bank of America and Webster Bank, Roos said. 

Long-term goals include increasing the museum’s $2-million endowment to $10 million over time, and raising the profile of the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, which offers an annual cash prize to a top fiction author. 

Past winners include authors Stephen Graham Jones ("The Only Good Indians"), Ocean Vuong ("On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous"), Jesmyn Ward ("Sing, Unburied, Sing"), and Bill Beverly ("Dodgers").

The museum will also likely launch new programs and exhibits “to increase our reach in both our mission and how we matter to the public,” Roos said. 

Hans Miller, a former local insurance and banking executive who chairs the Mark Twain House’s board of directors, said another key focus area is trying to bring back more student groups. 

There were more than 7,000 school visits annually prior to the pandemic, Miller said. 

“We were an active partner with the schools, but now – because of COVID – it’s gotten harder to do the school visits because of costs and expenses,” Miller said. “We need to search hard to find a way to connect and reconnect with the schools. That’s a top priority.” 
 

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