As the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience — “THE MAX” — begins to take shape at Front Street and 22nd Avenue in Meridian, its President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Tullos generously took time last week for a conversation with The Meridian Star to talk about progress and challenges at the museum in the year ahead.

Tullos, 56, has more than 30 years experience as a museum executive and has led four other museums through construction and opening. He arrived in Meridian in September after serving as assistant secretary for the Louisiana Office of State Museums in the Department of Culture and Tourism, which oversees nine museum facilities in Louisiana.

QUESTION: How is this different from the other museums you’ve built and opened?

ANSWER: I think it’s different in that the community is really placing a lot of development and interest in this project and rightfully so. I think they realize more so than those other projects how important cultural tourism can be and so a lot of pieces to this that those other institutions didn’t have, that will make this work. I mean we have to work pretty hard to make this fail.

You’ve got property that is not even a half mile from the interstate, bingo. It’s just there. You’re right at the front door. 14 million people a year driving right past your front door.

You have a really unique mission that is both backed by the state and the private sector. I think the talent that we are representing with the artists, actors, writers, etc., most of them are iconic and that is going to be a good draw.

The challenge with purely visual art museums is that number one you have that term museum and in the American South that sort of a foreign term and people don’t get up on Saturday morning and say, “Let’s go to a museum.” That’s not the first thing on their agenda. That may be a metropolitan or urban idea of what you do on your time off but it’s not here in the South. ….

This one is different in that we are turning the whole situation around. We are going to be gravitating toward these iconic writers and poets and authors and then we are going to introduce arts to them through those people. People feel comfortable with a Sela Ward or a Morgan Freeman because they identify with them. They have read the work of Eudora Welty or are familiar with her at least. That is the difference I think in this formula. What will attract people to Meridian is to get to know these people a little more.

Q: Do you envision this as the destination or the place for people to stop while traveling through?

A: That’s another part of the formula I think is interesting. …No one is coming to Meridian just to stay in Meridian. They are coming for one reason mainly right now and that is to overnight on their trip to Atlanta or Nashville back to Dallas or New Orleans so we are going to be spending most of our marketing dollars outside in these major metropolitan areas trying to get people to make their travel plans to include Meridian as a stopping place. …

I think it already happens a lot because the development director mentioned to a friend in Texas that she was taking this job in Meridian and she said, “Oh, I know where that is. Every time I go to Atlanta, that is where I stop, I stay there overnight.”

So whoever chose Meridian for this museum is genius … If we market it right, they will come. They won’t come to a museum or a building. But if we market it right they will come as we are projecting. …

We are not just selling this museum but an entire package of opportunities for people. Say if you’re traveling east to west and looking for that place to stop, Meridian is it and here is why, we have 22 chain hotels, all these restaurants, this unique museum, etc. and so in my mind I would say that we would be a cool place to stop and chill. So it’s important to market appropriately. The attraction is here and surrounded by supportive industries that tourist want to participate in.

Q: Have you made any calls to tour operators to see if people can get us in their schedule for 2018 or is it too soon for that?

A: I think that now is the time to start doing that. Yeah, we need to be proactive. I’ve only been here two and a half months. When they asked me when I wanted to start, I said two months ago because really they were ready to start construction. So when Paula Chance, our marketing director, gets in she should be here in Jan. 15. The development director starts on the 27th of December, weird date, but I said the day you get here I’m working through the holidays we have got to sit down and we still have money to raise and people we need to go see. And so we are all beginning to work now, we are not behind schedule but we sure have a lot of work to do just to get this all laid out. It’s going to be an exciting year.

Q: Now that you are here, is there anything that has caught you by surprise?

A: Not really, we have lived in a lot of small southern communities which we prefer. For the past three and half years we have lived in both New Orleans and Baton Rouge. We have a house in Baton Rouge and apartment in New Orleans and major metropolitan cities are a challenge unto themselves. They are great to live in and lots to do but this is going to be different in that this museum is going to stand out in Meridian as an institution and it’s really a statewide institution.

I don’t think there is anything that surprised us, though, about Meridian. One thing, I think, is both amazing and most people that I find might be frustrated with is we haven’t taken advantage of all the opportunities we have in this city. Maybe that is not anything that is our fault, maybe there just wasn’t enough money to drive an economic program for downtown redevelopment.

You have a great inventory of buildings down here and being this close to an interstate. I hope Jean’s (restaurant) stays the same. I want the Japanese tourists on the bus to go to Jean’s because that’s what they are looking for, authentic southern hospitality, and that’s what it is. But we do need to work a lot. We need the Threefoot Building renovated, some other properties downtown. I think that may have surprised me some, the more I look at what has not been done, but that’s a good thing because that’s a lot of opportunity for young people to come in and do some great stuff.

There is a young man, Elic (Purvis), that has done an amazing job at the Venue, and that’s what we need in Meridian. Young people saying I have an idea for business and I’m going to start it in my hometown. And the guy that owns Harvest Grill. Farm to table in Meridian, who would have thought? I think that’s what attracted us. You have an opportunity here to really make a museum work.

If we play our cards right, Meridian will be a different city at the end of three years or at least on the path to it. So that is something that could be held up as model to other communities like Meridian looking for a path out of a rut they are stuck in. You know, maybe cultural tourism is a way to get a leg up. So the challenge fascinated us the most.

Q: There’s a lot of construction going on over at Front Street, are they on schedule?

A: Yes, we are. I was worried with all the rain, but they assured me we are on track. If you look at the site they are working on one end near the bridge and there is a reason for that. I call is mopping their way out of the kitchen. We have limitations on the height of the crane we can use because of regulations. So we have to use that crane and raising steel by the bridge building up and out. But to give you my solid confidence, yeah, we are good, will come when they have the concrete poured and all the steel is up. Then I know they are not going to get bogged down. They are getting close to that. They have five more sections to pour, which is really achievable for the schedule.

We anticipate opening the building with a preview party on Dec. 10, the anniversary or the (Mississippi) bicentennial or around that. Just to preview the building with our contributors and stakeholders and then we are going to close it down the next day and continue working.

We are investing in $14 million worth of highly technical immersive exhibitions that we don’t want to rush in their fabrication and we want to make sure that the content is accurate. We have assembled a scholar team that is going to look at all information related to each of these artists and make sure that it is true and factual and then we have rights and reproductions and lawyers and fees. The fees, my goodness, to use a snippet of film or music or even a photograph of somebody is going to be time-consuming.

We are going to open in the spring, so we can build the exhibits and trial them and make sure we can run them with our staff. The first experience visitors have we want to be perfect so they will come back. But if a film is jumpy or the lights are blinking on and off, I won’t be happy.

The second reason is I’m afraid that if we preview this museum while they are opening this fall, the history museum in Jackson and the Civil Rights museum in Jackson, they got all these other bicentennial events. We would be eclipsed. If we could focus a lot of national attention and get on CBS with this really neat museum and be the only thing happening of that level at that time in Mississippi or in the south, then we would be more successful in laying the groundwork for our marketing and that is key.

So, yeah, I think we are on schedule. If you had asked my when I took the job because the board and architects were on this hard deadline of Dec. 10 and before I even accepted the job I said I can’t accept this position without being honest, having been to this rodeo before you are not going to open in 12 months. There is no way, you can get this done. And you could see a sigh of relief from the architect and the people from New York that were planning and designing. It’s best for us to just wait and really make it a perfect experience.

We have a lot of frontline service people here we need to train. Because we want when you walk in the door even if it’s a volunteer person taking admissions I want them well trained but I want them to feel like they are from Mississippi, too. I want them to hear our twang.

Q: Your website is outlined nicely, with exhibits of Home, Church, People, Community, Land and World. Is that a firm outline?

A: The themes of the exhibition are meant to reveal to people the experience that some of these artists had in growing up or being born into this Mississippi culture. Some were born and then left immediately, some were born here like Mose Allison, who just passed away, a great jazz performer grew up on a plantation picking cotton, and then became one of the great poet writer and musician in the world after being raised here in this environment.

Through those things we are trying to show different parts of our culture that could have had an effect on these people. We also want them to have an understanding of who we are as a people a lot of southerners will get it. So the themes are set we are writing the didactic and interpretive material now for the exhibits. We are looking for artifacts to illustrate both the artwork and the place right now and that is going on pretty well.

We are trying not to be a collecting institution. We know we are going to have to purchase some things. We have a budget to purchase some things such as a painting or first edition book if we have to but our first priority and I’ve charged the exhibit people and scholar that is working with us to find these artifacts first try to find it on loan. We would rather have a painting by a Mississippi artist like Walter Anderson on loan from the Walter Anderson Museum for a period of time …

So all of those parts now have to take shape through a lot of research and reading. We met with the media content people who are going to be developing the interactives and applications that you can download on your phone and they have said beginning in January we will be getting weekly content packages that we as a staff and advisory committee that we have put together have to review and have back to them in five working days. And that will happen each week so there is going to be a lot of reading and vetting and rewriting and absorbing that information making sure that it’s accurate.

Building museums like this is content heavy. Designing it though in a way that you can go in and get a cursory idea of what you like and go back later on the application or on the website as it grows or you can spend time and dive in and scroll through it while you are in the museum.

Q: How much time should people allow to spend at the museum?

A: I would ask them to consider an hour and half. I think they are going to get drawn in. There are enough places we were talking last week and walking through the plans of the exhibit fabricators so all of the final drawings are not finalized yet, but last week we were walking through the exhibits one more time the concepts drawings and spatial studies and all this and one of the things I was trying to make sure they understood…

I’m 56 and I can stand up but I’m a desk jockey and I’m going to get tired after 30 minutes of standing up I’m going to want some place to sit down and read something. So why don’t we take in the home environment and have some place you can sit down and watch a three minute film. We are trying to develop the experience in a way that you don’t feel fatigued when you walk out.

If you have been to World War II (museum) this company that is designing our exhibits is the same company. So they are internationally renowned for their exhibit designs. So, yeah, an hour and half should work unless you are a real scholar and want to read everything. …

We are telling a lot of stories and people love stories. I think that is what is going to engage them more so than walking into an art museum with a bunch of paintings.

We did this study about 20 years ago; we put people with clipboards and timers in galleries around the country and the average 2,000 square foot gallery in the U.S. What do you think the average time people spent was? These were just art galleries, it was 5 seconds. Because they would walk in and walk out, most people don’t read. So our challenge is get them absorbed, make them read, present it in a way that makes them want to watch or listen and learn something because education really is part of what we are doing we are not just celebrating these actors, we are celebrating their art and why we should appreciate it.

Q: Projected cost containment, do you perceive problems?

A: I don’t, not with the building because all of that is under contract. We did it through a process with Bob Luke which was very open with calls for contractors and proposals. We have two accountants watching the money as it goes along. We have hired one from the board that reviews all of the requests from the architect and from each of the contractors making sure that they are staying in line and on budget. So the building, I think, is fine, that’s another reason you will be glad to get out of the ground because in Alexandria we ran into major problems with soil issues and we ran into an archeological site that had to be excavated, which threw the schedule back two months because that was federal law. They also during the excavation of the site pulled up a fiber optic cable that connected two military bases in Louisiana so even more delay. So I will be glad when we are totally out of the ground because then you really don’t have any reason for delay. Weather won’t be an issue anymore, or supplies.

Now with the exhibits, I think we are good. We built enough contingency in the budget that if we do run into some problems with acquisition of artifacts we do have some money to make sure that it happens. If we run into a cost overage with the media pieces and all the electronics that go in the building we built enough contingencies there. And when we had our interviews, we interviewed two companies one out of New Orleans and one out of New Jersey to do the fabrication and both came significantly under our budget. So we were real encouraged by that, too. So I think we are going to be fine.

We want to make sure that we preserve as much of our campaign as we can again to make sure that we market it right and to do some things that are going to have to be done eventually like more parking. We have some parking invested in the building and I told some people this, I’m not really sure that I want people to pull right up to the museum on Front Street, get out of their car, go into the museum, because then they will come out of the museum and get right back into their car and hit the McDonald’s on the way out and leave town. I want them to have to park two blocks away and walk past a toy store or restaurant or dress shop…

I know there is a proposal before the city now to do an economic development plan for downtown that is really important if they can get that passed and bring some other people in to say this is how your directional roads should go in the downtown area to capture the most traffic and get the RVs and tour buses to come through.

Q: Will the museum have parking for RVs or is that another issue?

A: Yeah, that is an issue. I’m worried about that, we just need to go ahead and get the land. There is plenty down the street because from my experience what happens with most of these tour companies, and RVs are big things, so we have to make it easy for them to get to us. Usually with buses they drop people off then go park a few blocks away. I feel confident we are going to be able to get parking down the street, but I want us to solve the pedestrian and automobile problem sooner than later. We have 20 spots at the building, which is good, but I would love for us to think about some other solutions in tandem with the city so we are planning together. I want them to walk by that Popsicle shop. That’s really important.

Q: Any challenges we haven’t mentioned that you would like to talk about?

A: I think that we just as a community we need to be prepared and I think that our hospitality industry and I’ve had a chance to stay in a couple of hotels downtown and the people that work in the restaurants along there are well trained, great folks, good hospitality. We need to get prepared to make people feel comfortable to have clear directional signage. Everything the city is already aware of, just a lot of overdue process we need to go through to make sure that happens.

Q: In the end, what do you think the impact of the museum will be on the community both tangible and intangible?

A: One of the things we are working on and we have an opportunity to do this, I’m delighted that the community saw the investment in this project with the 2 percent food and beverage tax. That bond sale that is going to happen because of that tax, is going to enable us to pay those bonds off, to support to some extent this museum’s venture in the first few years and while we are doing that we are going to be approaching all of these artists that we are representing while they are still alive and their families and asking them to contribute toward a permanent fund for this museum, an endowment.

If we had a substantial permanent fund that a percentage of the interest every year, maybe 4 percent, to support the operations of the museum, it will be here in perpetuity, if they manage it right, it will be here long after I’m gone. I think that is important because it is a cultural asset that you don’t want to go away and it has a lot of history in it, both the people and places of Mississippi. That’s going to be one of my goals in the first few years of operation is talking endowment with people.

So I think what can happen in Meridian, when I look back on places like Ocean Springs when we opened that museum in 1990, there was that one museum there and there was a Jean’s type restaurant on Washington Avenue, city hall, realtor office, toy store and drugstore and that was it. You could stand out in the middle of Washington Street and shoot a gun down the street and not hit anybody, you go down there now and it’s like a traffic jam because of all the tourists, and we predicted that. We knew the museum would attract tourists to Ocean Springs.

So I think we are going to see in Meridian that same type thing and we aren’t the only thing. If we get the Raytheon thing that will be another thing to transform the city. Renovate the Threefoot building, etc. If you start seeing more retail pop up on Front Street you will see residencies upstairs and see a downtown neighborhood culture come back.

If I’m lucky enough to see this, 10 years from now I think it will be a whole different place, exciting place. The formula is there. We just need to make sure it happens and get the right people to invest, are serious and care about the city.

Q: We see Jim Henson’s Kermit the Frog is on your committee. What role does Kermit the Frog have?

A: Kermit is, of course a joke with us, but people like Sela (Ward) are really dedicated. They don’t have time to work on it but are happy to lend their name and influence and to show up when we need them and they are happy to pick up the phone and connect us with another artist. So they are a big help in that way.

We will have our first meeting in March. So that is a really important part we want to broaden. I think a lot of that will come into fruition with the Hall of Fame. We have online voting going on right now for the first 15 inductees into the Hall of Fame. So as that process continues on I think we will see our honorary advisors group grow because they are letting their name and reputation and influences and some gifts be used.