It’s been a little over a year since a new leadership team took responsibility for the The Dayton Art Institute. We recently visited with executive director Michael Roediger and associate director Jane Black to reflect on what they have accomplished in their first year at the helm of the 93-year-old institution.

In the museum’s new community space, as workmen put finishing touches on the newly renovated Leo Bistro cafe, we talked about success stories, challenges and what the future has in store.

Q: So tell us about this new space…

Jane: It’s a place you’d want to hang out; it feels good, doesn’t it? It’s a perfect mix of upscale and casual — you feel like you could come here night or day, have a little snack or a big party. It has free Wi-Fi.

Michael: I’m going to have my mom’s 80th birthday here, and we have aunts and uncles coming from Springfield, Columbus, Cincinnati. We’ve basically moved things around — combined the old cafe and private dining room so that the store and restaurant are a little bigger. It’s much brighter because these windows had been covered up by shelves so you didn’t see them. And we have the curatorial department looking into whether we have some sculptures that could go outside so you could see them from the restaurant windows.

Jane: And while you’re sitting here in the cafe you’re also looking into the gift shop and might see a vase you’d like for your mom’s birthday.

Q: I know both of you grew up in Dayton and have had connections to this museum throughout your lives. Can you tell us a little about those experiences?

Michael: I grew up in Trotwood and came here as a child with my family, and I also took classes — both independently and with my dad. My dad called me a few years ago and said: “I just realized I took all of your older brothers fishing by themselves, but I never took you by yourself, are you upset about that?”

I said, “Are you kidding, you took me to where I really wanted to go! I really didn’t want to go fishing.”

My parents were wonderful about making sure we had access to whatever our interests were — they were visual and arts lovers, so museums and theater experiences were always part of our vacations and day-to-day life. I’ve brought my son to classes here and my dad’s mom brought him here — they lived adjacent to this neighborhood and would walk up here. (But my grandmother would make sure when they walked by paintings with nudes, she would cover the eyes of her three sons!)

Jane: My memories of the Dayton Art Institute are really more from early adulthood. I was always art-interested but I was at home drawing. After I was able to get around the city on my own, I spent quite a lot of time here — viewing the collection, taking ceramics classes. And my mom has been a docent here for 20 years and knows more about the museum than I do.

Q: When you think of being in this building as kids, how did it make you feel?

Michael: It made me feel that it was a place I was included and could feel safe and could be creative.

Jane: Museums inspire thought for me. I find them places in which connections are made between my own interests and experiences and those of the larger world, other cultures — connections to the whole wide world is what I feel most.

Q: So how did you both end up here as the first team of directors in the museum’s history?

Jane: We knew there was a need for new leadership, and we were all thinking of each other at the same time —myself and Michael and Linda Lombard, who was the interim director of the museum and is our current board chair. She was thinking of us for our concentration on the business side and the need for having a clear plan for moving the institution forward. She knew we’d both worked that way in our previous jobs — I was the executive director of the Dayton Visual Arts Center and Michael was the vice president of development for the Victoria Theatre Association.

We knew each other through Leadership Dayton and through working on projects together and sitting on committees to help the larger arts community thrive. Both of us independently knew the museum needed an influx of new energy.

Q: When you look back on this past year, how are you feeling about it?

Jane: It’s been the most exciting and one of the most intense years of my life. It feels like both the longest and the shortest year I’ve ever spent.

Michael: It has gone by so fast and yet some of the time it feels like we’re never going to get there.

Q: Is the opening of this new community space the biggest accomplishment of this first year?

Jane: This is the most visible change. The most invisible accomplishment is the curatorial hire. Finding the right curator for this institution was a really big deal, it was really important. And we think we’ve found the perfect person. (Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, the museum’s new curator of collections and exhibitions.)

Facility-wise, fixing the roof and the well for the boiler-chiller was hugely important for protecting the art. The boiler-chiller is what keeps the temperature and humidity steady. We keep it at 70 degrees and 50 percent humidity 24/7. It was at a point where it needed to be cleaned and so when we got into that process, it turned out the pipe had corroded and was a much bigger repair than we had anticipated. Those are the kinds of unknown challenges we face that don’t show.

Q: So how did you come up with the idea of this community space?

Jane: What people have come to expect in daily life is that there is always going to be a comfortable place to sit where you can get a cup of coffee and that there’s Wi-Fi and that it’s open a lot of the time, the hours aren’t limited, a place that feels like home and like someplace you can meet your friends. What has changed in the world is that we all used to plan our time and then follow through on our plans. And now, we have so much flexibility because we all have a phone in our pockets.

So as an institution, instead of relying on the fact that people know your hours or sign up for a class three weeks in advance, you have to be ready whenever somebody walks in the door to create an experience for them that makes them want to come back. And you have to figure out how to do it in a way that pays for itself.

Michael: You don’t have to pay admission to come for coffee or for dinner or buy a gift in the gift shop. But it’s a benefit to be a member because you’ll get discounts on all of those things. We just had a new member get-together and they got to tour the objects that are off-view in storage.

Q: What is the relationship between you and your staff? How many staff members do you have presently?

Jane: There are about 90 altogether, about 40 of those are part-time security guards.

Michael: We have traditional staff meetings once a month, and then when we came on board, Jane and I looked at the areas of our own interests and strengths and divided those departmentally. We both look at everything as our job but we have focuses and meet with our department heads in those areas weekly.

Q: What about your relationship with the community? Let’s take, for example, the universities?

Michael: We think the relationships with the universities are very important and we’ve tried to engage on different levels with all of them. One of the things that’s really neat is the growing partnership with Wright State and their student involvement. We have some direct connection with UD, Sinclair and Wright State and those connections are growing.

Jane: The students experience our collection, or they come draw in the galleries. There are internship opportunities in areas like marketing, we’re talking now about culinary internships because we have a large events aspect. We’re serving the faculties as a place for them to do research and to have conversations with each other and with our curatorial and education staff, and we’re talking with them about exhibitions. It could be professor-curated or professors who are artists could be showing. There isn’t anything specific on the books yet but there are so many possibilities.

Michael: We’re exploring the possibility of having classes taught here. They could then have an interactive experience with the art as opposed to just looking at a book.

Q: Are you looking at the possibility of changing the admission policy or changing the hours or days the museum is open since it’s now closed on both Monday and Tuesday?

Michael: Admission is tricky. For a long time, we didn’t have admission, then it was added. We do believe it’s a national trend that there is a value to having admission — but it’s a suggested donation and we’ve been adamant that if someone can’t afford it, they are welcome. We don’t want anybody to be turned away.

Jane: We’re looking at our hours. There might be a shift that would make it easier for busy people to come to the museum.

Q: Anything else you think is important to mention about this past year?

Jane: For me, one of the best things was the Superhero Summer because it’s a good model for sustainability. The museum had a hole with no special exhibits scheduled over the summer, so we saw that as an opportunity: we had 5,000-6,000 people come to that exhibit and made $30,000 in revenue. It attracted a lot of families and first-time visitors.

Michael: Jane curated that exhibits, which meant putting together 220 objects and 10,000 words. We didn’t buy that show, we made that show!

Q: How is the museum doing financially?

Michael: We walked into a pretty big gap in the budget and had a lot to accomplish in a year, and we think we’ve made great strides in closing that gap. We hope to do that by the end of December. The community space project is costing slightly above $300,000 and the board supported the project if we did not take endowment money so we sought private funding.

Jane: We might have closed the gap in the operating budget if we hadn’t done some of the facility maintenance and improvements we’ve elected to do. But we believe safeguarding the art and initiatives like the improved bistro/store areas are going to bring in revenue going forward.

Michael: In the spring, we’ll be doing a commemorating of the 1913 Dayton flood, which Jane will be curating. We’ll be rolling out a new customer service plan for our staff, empowering them to be even more customer oriented.

Q: What do you do when you’re not at the museum?

Michael: All of my free time is spent with my family. There is nothing I ever wanted to be more than a father. I love spending time with my son; he has taught me so much and how to be a better person.

Q: What has been the biggest surprise in the past year?

Michael: How supportive the community has been. I knew people loved The Dayton Art Institute, but I never imagined how receptive people would be to Jane and me and our vision of making the museum a welcoming place for everyone. You can feel the energy in the museum, and it is exciting. I love Dayton — the people are so passionate, interested and involved.

Q: What is your personal dream for the museum?

Michael: I want the museum to become the region’s gathering place for celebrations and visual art. I want people to be able to come to the DAI not really knowing what they are expecting, but knowing that they will discover that there are creative people, events, activities, food and beautiful and interesting objects for them to experience. I want it to feel welcoming and accessible. Also, I dream that we will build our endowment to the level that makes it possible to proactively maintain these facilities while providing meaningful experiences and not have to be worried about how we will balance our budget. We will get there … I want to see this become the norm and the reality.

Museums once had a reputation of being white, elitist institutions. Our goal is to treat everyone who enters the museum with the utmost respect — no matter what their race, age, religion, sexual orientation or socio-economic level.

Jane said something the other day that I think is vital. She said, “Thrive not survive.” That puts things into perspective. We can survive but that isn’t good enough. We want new partnerships, new people. We want to find ways to expose people to new experiences.