By Gretchen Sullivan Sorin
Director and Distinguished Professor
The Cooperstown Graduate Program

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

Doing more with less and rethinking the museum, its mission and relevance were prominent themes for American museums in 2009. Finding new audiences and keeping old ones, finding new sources of revenue in a difficult economic climate, and generating popular programs in the face of decreasing assets are the greatest challenges for the future. Museums of all disciplines are searching for strategies to remain afloat and to find their footing in the struggling economy. Some institutions, like the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles survived only through a bailout from a major donor while other institutions tightened their belts, streamlined their staffs and worked hard to reach out to their communities with new programs that stretched their missions and enticed visitors. "People bring museums to life," Pulitzer Prize winning art critic Holland Cotter reminded us in an article in the New York Times. And museums are experimenting with all kinds of ideas to boost audience numbers, to respond to the needs of changing communities, and thereby to find ways to stay alive and lively. "Several of our veteran museums are doing by undoing: loosening up the rigid values and temple-of-art models that shaped them," says Cotter, "and replacing these with a new 'people's museum' model, unsacred in atmosphere, fluid in values, with complicated answers to the question of what museums are." ¹

Museums and the Recession

Dramatically shrinking endowments brought on by the recession led museums across the country to cut staff members, reduce salaries, and to institute hiring freezes and staff furloughs in 2009. The crisis seems to have disproportionately affected large and medium size art and history museums, those most dependent on endowment income. Institutions from the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Houston Museum of Art in Texas to the Museum of the City of New York and the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin experienced a significant loss of endowment and a decrease in public funding. Many museums cancelled expensive new exhibitions and extended the run of other shows to avoid the expense of loans and exhibition rental fees. To close budget deficits some institutions also looked for ways to creatively expand the use of their permanent collections while others reduced open hours or CEO compensation. Some are considering mergers. The Brooklyn Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art are among those museums that raised their admission prices in an attempt to generate more revenue while other museum professionals debated whether or not museums should charge admission at all.² The Las Vegas Museum of Art finally succumbed to what its director, art historian Libby Lumpkin called an "economic Katrina" in the city after several years of trying to remain afloat with a small endowment and a sinking economy.³

"Two categories of museums that are really having problems are historic houses and living history museums," commented Elizabeth Merritt, Founding Director of the Center for the Future of Museums. "I think a bunch of them are going to close or they are not going to be museums anymore. They are finding themselves in a situation in which their core function is not matched up to their source of revenue." ⁴ While declining visitation to historic house museums and living history farms has been a trend for several years, the nation's economic woes have exacerbated the problem. The proliferation of historic houses-there are more than 300 in Philadelphia alone-also contributes to the problem. Hundreds of historic buildings throughout the country, swept up in the patriotic fervor of the bicentennial, were preserved as museums, open to the public with collections of artifacts. There are between 8,000 and 15,000 historic house museums across the country. Now, more than 30 years after the bicentennial many of these buildings are suffering from undercapitalization and deferred maintenance. Often frozen in time with stagnant period rooms and unchanging programs these museums no longer relate to their communities. Reflecting the changing demographics of the United States and the interest in 20th-century history, new historic house museums continue to be added to the mix. Marion Anderson's Philadelphia home as well as her Danbury Connecticut studio and The Dix Hills, New York ranch house belonging to jazz musician John Coltrane are among the newer historic house museums. Concerned about the future of historic house museums, preservationists and museum professionals at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Association for State and Local History have convened summits and sessions at their annual conferences to debate this issue. Both groups envision a future in which successful historic house museums will broaden their missions and go beyond the "frozen view of the past" to transform themselves into sustainable, community-focused institutions.⁵ Many may not survive as museums, as Elizabeth Merritt predicts, and will need to find other ways of protecting their community's architectural heritage, perhaps as Historic New England has done with their Stewardship Program. "Few [historic houses] will ever approach the revered status of Mount Vernon or Monticello," wrote Marian Godfrey of the Pew Charitable Trusts and Barbara Silberman, principal at Heritage Partners Consulting. "As more communities recognize the perilous future facing their historic house museums, more are joining the conversation of conversion, hoping to discover innovative ways to improve the interpretation, access and community involvement of their significant buildings." ⁶

The Farmers' Museum, Cooperstown, NY

Some museums-particularly children's museums and science museums have actually fared somewhat better than large art and history museums either because of their already smaller budgets or because of less dependence on endowment income and thus limited exposure to the stock market.⁹ Science museums willingness to push the boundaries of their missions also helped their bottom lines. To boost visitation, science museums continued to take on tremendously popular but somewhat controversial exhibitions. "Harry Potter: The Exhibition" at the Boston Museum of Science fascinated its young viewers with "authentic" artifacts from the motion picture. Elaborate room settings recreate Hogwarts and Hagrid's hut with props from the motion picture, but critics found it only peripherally related to science.¹⁰ The Houston Museum of Natural Science at Sugarland similarly delighted young visitors with Disney's "Chronicles of Narnia" exhibition composed of fanciful environments that immersed children in the world of the popular books.

Ironically, the sluggish economy may have contributed to an increase in museum visitation in some museums even as other sources of revenue decreased. In the midst of the fiscal crisis, rather than going on vacation many families chose to explore entertainment and cultural resources in their own backyards to save money. Special and family oriented programs boosted visits to these institutions. New York City's Tenement Museum reported a substantial 20% increase in visitation over last year. Free or inexpensive museum entertainment represented good value for cash strapped families. Many museums responded to the decline in the economy by expanding their programming to encourage visitation even as they cut hours and staff.¹¹

Don't Close the Rose

Emblematic of the year's economic problems was the situation at Brandeis University, the home institution of the Rose Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts. The University took particularly dramatic steps to address their institutional deficit. Faced with a ten million dollar shortfall resulting from the dip in the stock market and the concurrent drop in their endowment, the university decided to dispose of the art collection housed in their Rose Museum and to close the museum's doors to raise needed cash. University President Jehuda Reinharz's ill conceived decision ignited a firestorm of criticism for the 48-year-old Rose and its important collection of postwar art that includes significant works by such artists as Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Motherwell, and Richard Serra. As supporters sported buttons and plastered signs on the museum reading such things as "Don't Close the Rose," the museum's director, Michael Rush, donors and supporters, students and the museum professional community mounted loud protests. In an article in the New York Times, art critic Roberta Smith called the decision to sell the Rose's collection, "an act of breathtaking stealth and presumption: a raid on a museum that supports itself, raises its own funds and has consistently planned wisely for its own future without leaning on the university." ¹²

Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

In July, three overseers of the Museum, including a member of the founding Rose family filed suit against Brandeis in a Massachusetts court to stop the sale of artwork and the closure of the Rose as a public museum. The court declined the university's request to dismiss the suit. In the future the university will inform the attorney general's office if a decision is made to sell art from the collection. The outcry from donors to the museum and from those both within and outside the Brandeis community stunned the University's administration and ultimately led to the formation of a committee to save the museum and to establish the Future of the Rose Committee, headed by Dr. Jerry Samet, the Chair of the University's Philosophy department.¹³ The American Association of Museums immediately weighed in on the controversy expressing the organization's alarm.

"Brandeis University is in fundamental violation of the public trust responsibilities it accepted the day it founded the Rose Museum. Such a sale is also a betrayal of the donors, who generously gave art for the benefit of the students and the public, not for paying bills. This is a direct violation of the AAM Code of Ethics for museums," wrote AAM President Ford Bell.¹⁴ The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) also denounced the University's decision.

The controversy over the Rose reflects a larger concern about the use of valuable museum collections as assets that anxious boards may sell to replace a leaking roof or to balance the budget. "Current deaccession concerns are very negative for a process that should actually be a part of sound collections management," commented Historic New England President and CEO Carl Nold. University museums, foundation museums, state government, any museum that has a parent with a different purpose than the museum faces the possibility that the collection will be viewed as a disposable asset in times of economic crisis. Deaccessioning collections is tied to issues of financial stability for these institutions. "The Rose is the most visible manifestation of this problem," Nold noted. "The College Art Association and the Museums Association of New York among other professional organizations are working on the problem of institutions deaccessioning collections to meet financial needs and they are strengthening standards." ¹⁵

A New Internationalism

The recession helped to highlight the changing museum world as a global community with common goals and common values. We are beginning to see ourselves as one large profession across the globe with similar interests and shared concerns from climate change to the standards for protecting collections in a disaster and the concerns of civil rights. "When we did a strategic plan [for the American Association of Museums] five years ago there was a huge battle over anything that was not about American museums," said Carl Nold. "The world has changed so much in that five year period. Museums large and small realize that we live in a global community. We have all struggled across the globe with the economic crisis. There is much to share." ¹⁶

The growing reputation of the museums throughout the world that focus on human rights and promote conversations on issues related to war, slavery, genocide, oppression, and immigration demonstrates the depth of collaboration within the international museum community. With only 9 members when it started in Bellagio, Italy in 1999, the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience now includes 110 museums in 29 countries. Sites as diverse as the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, that with its founding director Ruth Abram organized the first Coalition meeting, to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia, Terezin, the Nazi concentration camp in the Czech Republic, and Haskell, the Native American boarding school in Lawrence, Kansas are all a part of the group. The Coalition clearly defines museums as places that embrace their role as forums supporting discussions about contemporary topics like immigration and torture. This responsibility, once considered controversial for history museums, is now mainstream and international.¹⁷

To assist museums in collaborating across national borders the American Association of Museums undertook a major effort in 2009 to bring "international voices and perspectives into the core" of the organization's publications, their professional development programs, and the AAM annual meeting. At the April 2008 meeting the Board of Directors of the Association formed a Taskforce on International Programs that completed its final report in 2009. Taskforce recommendations include beginning immediately to create a truly international and multicultural conference with the next annual meeting in May 2010 in Los Angeles. The meeting in Houston the following year presents similar opportunities. Both are richly multicultural cities. To encourage larger numbers of international participants the conference will provide simultaneous translation into multiple languages for a global track of sessions that address mutual opportunities and challenges. Popular AAM publications will be available in languages other than English and the AAM will expand involvement with the International Council of Museums (ICOM).¹⁸

Crisis as Opportunity

Ultimately, the nation's economic problems may result in some positive effect on American museums. The institutions that will emerge from this crisis after a decade of growth and expansion and now an indeterminate amount of time of economic retraction, will be sleeker, more creative and more responsive to their communities' needs because they have to be. As that audience becomes increasingly diverse it will mean truly diversifying the museum-its staff and visitors-and not simply talking about diversity as we have been doing for the past 25 years. The recession will result in museums being more sensitive to the needs of communities and constituents if they want to survive. We will have to look outward, not inward. Elizabeth Merritt agrees, "museums need to question assumptions about who they are, who they serve, and how they operate. They need to be open to rethinking everything from where they get their funding, to their relationship with their users, to the role of the museum and its curators in organizing and presenting content." ¹⁹ Museum Consultant and former Deputy Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Elaine Gurian goes even farther on the blog, Museum 3.0 with a post entitled, "Museum as Soup Kitchen." She asks how museums are helping their communities in the current economic hard times. "It is clear to me," she writes, "that museums could be much more helpful and timely by changing hours, job retraining, health care information and all manner of social service." Expanding our community service role may also help museum with their bottom lines.

Now 17 years after the publication of Excellence and Equity-the 1992 statement by the American Association of Museums about what museums are, perhaps it is time for us to consider an expanded statement of purpose. As museums move forward to serve more diverse public audiences they will need excellence-outstanding educational programming, and equity-access for everyone. But this must also be tied to enterprise or entrepreneurship-creative, even transformative, self-sustainability. Museums can no longer depend entirely on public and private philanthropy. They must, instead, depend on their own ingenuity, their business acumen, and the institution's responsiveness to the community's needs. Without losing sight of the core mission-the importance of preserving the collection, as well as doing good and serving everyone, including those who can't afford our sometimes exorbitant admission fees-they must learn to use their own resources and ingenuity to recognize opportunities both to increase revenue and to provide programs that people want.

On February 4, 2009, Republican Senator from Oklahoma Tom Coburn introduced an amendment (Amendment number 175) to the economic stimulus bill that prohibited funds from being allocated to museums. Linking museums and aquaria to other forms of community entertainment, the proposal read:

"None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, arts center, or highway beautification project, including renovation, remodeling, construction, salaries, furniture, zero-gravity chairs, big screen televisions, beautification, rotating pastel lights, and dry heat saunas."

After considerable political jockeying, a second amendment also proposed by Coburn (S. Amdt. No. 309) and still prohibiting funding of museums, passed the Senate. A joint House-Senate Conference Committee reconciled the legislation passed by the two houses, no longer prohibiting funding for museums or arts centers. Zoos and aquaria, however, continued to be listed among the institutions ineligible for federal stimulus money. Thanks to a massive lobbying effort, the American Association of Museums was able to preserve potential funding for most types of museums. President Obama signed the bill into law on February 17, 2009 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.²⁰

Coburn's comments and the fight to convince Congress that museums contribute substantially to the national economy and to the lives of American communities suggest that we are simply not doing enough to make legislators aware of the value of museums as educational institutions, places of entertainment, storehouses of our collective national memory and economic engines. We need to do more to show them why museums are essential. We are all part of a collective field that provides service to the nation. We need to stand together, Carl Nold reminds us. "Museums are about stories and Americans love to tell their stories and have their stories repeated and we are not doing enough to explain how important it is to provide cultural and educational experiences to the people of our country." ²¹

1. Holland Cotter, "Museums Look Inward for Their Own Bailouts," The New York Times, January 7, 2009.
2. An informal survey conduced by the California Association of Museums resulted in a spirited debated about museums admission fees. 36% of the respondents believed museums should be free. 35% believed they should charge admission fees. California Association of Museums, http://www.calmuseums.org/e-news/poll/2008-08.html accessed, November 10, 2009.
3. Sarah Douglas, "Libby Lumpkin on Leaving Las Vegas," ARTINFO, February 27, 2009
4. Elizabeth Merritt, interview with Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, November 10, 2009.
5. From the Pocantico Proclamation, November, 2008, accessed, November 21, 2009 http://www.preservationnation.org/issues/sustainability/additional-resources/Pocantico-Proclamation.pdf
6. Marian Godfrey and Barbara Silberman, "A Model for Historic House Museums," The Virginian-Pilot, January 2008, accessed, November 21, 2009.
   
7. Bruce Horowitz, USA Today, "Recession Grows Interest in Seeds, Vegetable Gardening," February 20, 2009.
8. D. Stephen Elliott, interview with Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, November 16, 2009.
9. Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, "Milwaukee Public Museum to furlough employees, suspend 401(k) addition," March 5, 2009; Economic Change and the Future of American Museums, Guest blog by James Chung and Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com/2009/09/economic-change-and-future-of-american.html, Accessed, November 10, 2009
10. Mark Feeney, "'Harry Potter' & the green machine: Not much science, but exhibit's enchantments will bring in the crowds," The Boston Globe, October 24, 2009.
11. Nicole G. Anderson, Gotham Gazette, "Museums Struggle to Maintain Programs and Projects," October 2009. http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/arts/20091006/1/3046/Accessed November 8, 2009; Portland Press Herald, "Colby art museum a picture of financial health," September 7, 2009.
12. Roberta Smith, "In the Closing of Brandeis Museum, a Stark Statement of Priorities," New York Times, February 1, 2009.
13. Future of the Rose Committee http://www.brandeis.edu/provost/adhoc/rose_cmte.html accessed November 6, 2009; New York Times, "Outcry Over a Plan to Sell Museum's Holdings," January 27, 2009; New York Times, "In the Closing of Brandeis Museum, a Stark Statement of Priorities," February 1, 2009; "Museum Family Denounces Brandeis," March 16, 2009; Los Angeles Times, "Rose Art Museum lawsuit recalls the Barnes 'legal theft,'" July 27, 2009; New York Times, "Brandeis Pledges Not to Sell Art Donated by Overseers," October 15, 2009; The Boston Globe, "Judge refuses to dismiss Brandeis museum lawsuit," October 14, 2009.
14. AAM Statement on the Closure of the Rose Museum at Brandeis University, Washington, D.C. January 29, 2009. http://www.aam-us.org/pressreleases.cfm?mode=list&id=153 accessed, November 7, 2009.
15. Carl Nold, interview with Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, November 9, 2009.
16. Carl Nold, interview with Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, November 9, 2009.
17. Julia Klein, "1 Part History, 2 Parts Shrine," The New York Times, March 19, 2009
18. Final Report, Taskforce on International Programs of the American Association of Museums, 2009
19. Elizabeth Merritt, interview with Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, November 2009.
20. American Association of Museums, Advocacy Website, Speakup for Museums, The Coburn Amendment: An Explanation and Timeline http://www.speakupformuseums.org/docs/Coburn%20Amendment.pdf accessed November 23, 2009.
21. Carl Nold, interview with Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, November 2009.