Below are two important stories about U.S. museums in general and the Getty in particular.
2. Leading US museums are finally in recovery mode and their directors are much more optimistic about the financial outlook than a year ago, but few are feeling bullish. Endowments may have increased but they have not regained their peak of 2007. Of the ten richest museums we surveyed, seven were within sight of their previous levels, but the wealthiest, the Getty Trust, is only a third of the way to the $1.8bn it lost during the downturn (see table, p10). The road to financial health will be long for all but a fortunate few, and many fear that the economic recovery may prove short-lived. Nevertheless, many directors describe themselves as “cautiously optimistic”.
Thomas Campbell, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, remembers spending his first six months making 10% cuts in 2009. “It was all quite tough. We did what we needed to do,” he says. Seventy-four members of the professional staff were made redundant, and 95 took early retirement. His outlook is much more positive, buoyed by a return in the value of the endowment, booming attendance figures (see p35) and major donations, including $60m from a trustee, David Koch, announced in February. “I don’t want to tempt fate but the situation seems better,” says Campbell, who revealed that the museum raised more than the $100m it needed to renovate its wing of American art, which reopened in January.
The museum was directly affected by the banking crisis: it lost $5.8m in annual rent, which it was expecting from its tenant, the failed Washington Mutual bank. Help came in the form of grants from the Chase bank and the Gates Foundation. Now the museum has a stable tenant: the retailer Nordstrom. But the time is still not right to launch a campaign to increase the endowment. “Things have improved, but they just haven’t improved enough,” Wright says.
“Are things better? Yes. Are things good? No,” says Arnold Lehman, the director of the Brooklyn Museum. Post-recession, fundraising staff have to work harder. “Instead of sending out 50 requests for support for a project, we must send out 100.” He says that corporate sponsorship is much more difficult to attract, and praises the individual donors who came forward when things looked their bleakest.
At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Timothy Rub, the museum’s director, says: “I hope it’s the beginning of a recovery, but I think it’s going to be a long road.” As a result, the museum’s priority is “stabilising support for exhibitions and the presentation of the collection. We want to make sure these are well funded and sustained, rather than growing [the museum] at the margins with buildings or programmes.”
He also says support from individuals has recovered strongly, singling out a “remarkable” $28m given by Gerry Lenfest, a former chairman of the museum, made in 2008. His gift is a challenge grant, which has encouraged other donors to give a further $15m so far. “It will end up netting $55m to $56m to endow curatorial positions.”
Economists predicted that the Midwest would be hit hardest by the recession, due to a “triple whammy” of the slumps in car manufacturing, banking and housing. But the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, David Franklin, is in “growth mode—and feeling pretty confident”. In 2011, the museum raised about $20m, and “in the eight months up to March we have raised $18.5m”, he says.
Cleveland’s museum is due to complete a $350m expansion in two years. “That’s encouraging people to be generous,” he says. He also says that corporate support has returned “even though the economy is tense”, and that companies want to show they are being active in the community.
Douglas Druick, the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, says cost-cutting measures have ended, while support from companies, foundations and individuals has remained “steady”. “But it will take a little more time to see any major shifts coming out of an economic recovery,” he says.
San Francisco and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas escaped the worst of the recession and museums in both are expanding. “We’re very optimistic,” says Neal Benezra, the director of SFMoMA. “We certainly tightened our belts, but we didn’t have to cancel any exhibitions or lay off staff.”
The museum has raised “about 79%” of its $555m goal, says Benezra, “but when you’re on a capital campaign, the danger is that you neglect annual giving. We’re really asking our friends to give twice, but the response has been positive.”
Maxwell Anderson, who moved from Indianapolis to lead the Dallas Museum of Art in January, is about to announce a capital project. “[They] are typically harbingers of returning confidence,” he says. “Patrons have not been that hard hit or felt the pinch in their inheritances [here].”
Other parts of the US and smaller institutions may not be as fortunate. “My sense is that museums are coasting—to see how things go,” says Ford Bell, the president of the American Association of Museums. “The economy seems to be improving but a lot of people are waiting to see if ‘the other shoe drops’—it might suddenly get bad again.” A sharp rise in oil prices “or a big tangle in Congress about how to stimulate the economy” could derail the recovery. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/US-museums/26128
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