Summary of the Economic Impact on Museums

Briefly, another good synopsis of the current effects of the economic downturn on US museums from the Winnipeg Sun. It chronicles the Getty, Met, Art Institute, DIA, Las Vegas Art Museum, National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, and so on and so forth.

The article also talks about despite the financial crisis, how visitorship is up for many museums and programming is still going strong.

Train(-Wreck?)

A little over a year ago, the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum opened on the LA County Museum of Art campus, transforming it completely. I remember at the time, that a giant crane dangling a locomotive that would actually spout steam on the hour had been planned as an in situ art piece by Jeff Koons, but there had been some delay so that piece wasn't ready for the grand opening. Frankly, I just thought it sounded sort of dangerous, but if the engineers could find a way to ensure that the train stayed suspended in the air rather than falling onto the heads of unsuspecting art lovers, well then, I guess that would be fine; as an art concept I was sort of indifferent to it.

But I just learned from Art for a Change that indeed it was engineering that caused the hold-up, for which I'm grateful. If this puppy is really going to happen, I want it to be safe! What I also learned from Art for a Change is that the price tag on this piece of art is $25 million. Wow. It would be the most expensive single piece ever commissioned by a museum. Again, wow. And especially right now. A third time, wow.

Vallen's blog post is fairly vitriolic, but his point is still taken: that's a whole lotta dough to be shelling out for one piece right now as other museums close their doors or lay off their staff. Maybe Train, as the piece is entitled, is actually the Little Engine That Shouldn't.

A Sobering Look at the Real Numbers

Mark Vallen over at Art for a Change wrote a very eloquent yet sobering post earlier this month putting the economic crisis and the President's spending plan in perspective: $50 million for national arts spending in the stimulus package and "$11 billion a month for the next year and a half despite the planned draw down of U.S. forces in Iraq."

Vallen also begins a list of museums that are laying off staff or closing their doors, similar to the list I began, but his is more detailed and mentions a couple I have not, such as the Walters Art Museum which "laid-off seven of its 150 employees, imposed a salary and hiring freeze, and cancelled [sic] a major exhibition of works by French painter Jean-Leon Gerome - an exhibit that would have been a collaborative project with the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and the Getty in Los Angeles."

When you look at the budget cuts for just the 8 institutions Vallen mentions, it becomes painfully obvious that $50 million just won't go very far. Closures will be inevitable. Guess Elizabeth Merritt of the Center for the Future of Museums is right; since it isn't a question of if but when, how many and who, maybe we need to start figuring out how to orchestrate this strategically so that the overall value of arts organizations as a whole is not diminished for the public.

Fighting to Save the End of the Trail

The End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, along with the Stevens-Crawford Heritage House and the Museum of the Oregon Territory closed on March 9 when their parent organization, Clackamas Heritage Partners, suspended operations due to financial troubles.

Disclosure time, here. I am a fan of the Clackamas Heritage Partners and a friend of their Executive Director, David Porter.

I know a lot of museums and cultural sites are having trouble right now, but with this one there is something immediate that you can do to help: join the Facebook cause.

Losses for the Getty

Uh-oh. I mean, I guess it was bound to happen. *Everyone* has been hit hard in the financial portfolio--why not the Getty, too? But the Getty Trust tightening its belt could have far-reaching consequences, not just for its own staff, but for the museum world at large. The Getty Trust supports many other museums and arts organizations through grants and programs. If the Getty is hit too hard, I fear for what could happen to some of its smaller brethren as a result...

Meanwhile, the head of the Getty Trust announced definitively that with the operations budget cuts would come staff cuts. The result is this underground blog: http://www.silencedogetty.blogspot.com/ posted by anonymous employees of the Getty looking to be heard by an administration that they feel is looking in all the wrong places to cut costs. For me, perhaps one of the most cogent sentiments expressed on this blog was from a comment left by an anonymous reader stating that it made him/her sad that while "the getty has a staff that is worth more than all that money and art" that same staff was now in danger of being laid off. What I find sad is that the same could be said for almost any museum--the most valuable assets of the museum world are the most overlooked and undervalued--the unsung staff members.

Similarly, the Met in New York, another museum with an endowment numbering in the billions, has also announced lay-offs. I hope that those whom I have known there will all be okay...

Fresno Met Can't Pay Bills

This story from the Mercury News makes me really sad, not just because it's yet another museum on the brink of financial ruin, but for more personal reasons.

Just about a year ago, I chaired a session at the California Association of Museums annual conference with one of the staff members from the Fresno Met as one of my panelists. I was so inspired by what she had accomplished there--maintaining memberships and membership revenues despite the fact that they didn't have a building--and that construction that was supposed to last for one year lasted for three years!

To me, the story that the Fresno Met had to tell was truly remarkable, so it makes me doubly sad to see them now, a year later, in such awful trouble. What on earth happened? Was the timing just wrong thanks to the economy that completely tanked? Was it a matter of the fallacy of "if you build it, they will come"--that is, did the Fresno Met just assume that once the new building was open that they could relax? Whatever it was, and perhaps it was a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, I hated seeing this in the news.