Adapting through Adversity: How a Desert Museum Blossomed during Drought

The Springs Preserve, Las Vegas’ premier museum on sustainable living and desert adaptation, opened months before an unprecedented economic crisis ravaged much of the United States, with a particularly severe impact on Las Vegas. In the midst of that crisis, with the attendant economic and political pressures that accompanied it, the Springs Preserve needed to adapt to harsh new realities under new leadership. Eleven years after those dark days, the Springs Preserve stands today as a vibrant, resilient example of a museum tested through extreme circumstances.
The panel will provide a case-study in lessons learned the hard way, the importance of data-driven decision-making, and the passion necessary to thrive in perilous circumstances. Panelists will include the director of the Springs Preserve at the time, who carried the heaviest burden of leading the Preserve through those difficult days, and her successor, who developed reporting tools that helped shape the response.
A focus of the presentation will be on ways that the museum adapted to changing community expectations—through staffing decisions, ticketing, expansion of major cultural events, and even changing the mission. Emphasis will be placed on the tools used to harness the resources of remaining staff, to build community acceptance, and to achieve the objective of becoming a community gathering place.