Museums – Portrait of a Challenging Year

Posted on 30 December 2009 | Comments Off

The year 2009 was an uncomfortable one for the museum world, as it was for most of the economy. One museum after another canceled programming, cut staff, froze pay, limited visitor hours and increased admissions in an attempt to reduce expenditures and raise some income. None have been immune from trouble. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, for instance, saw its cash and investments drop 23%, to $196 million from $254.7 million, during the 2008-09 fiscal year, while the investment portfolio of New York’s Museum of Modern Art shrank 23%, to $610 million from $788 million, during that same period. Back in February, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that its endowment lost $700 million over the preceding eight months, or a quarter of its value, declining to $2.1 billion. As a result, the museum has laid off about 250 full- and part-time employees in 2008 and 2009.

Read this interesting overview!  Portrait of a Challenging Year – WSJ.com.

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