Whitney Museum Cuts Its Staff and Budget
December 1, 2001
By CELESTINE BOHLEN
he Whitney Museum of American Art announced a package of layoff and budget cuts yesterday intended to pull the 70-year-old museum through a financial crisis that was largely precipated by a sudden and drastic drop in out-of-town visitors.
The Whitney is the second major New York Museum to make painful cuts after the Sept. 11 disaster, which has kept many American and foreign tourists from coming to New York City.
Last month, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum announced that it would be laying off 80 people — or almost 20 percent of its staff — as it struggles to balance its budget for next year. The layoffs at the Whitney are less drastic, totaling 12 full-time and two part-time employees, out of a staff of 210 people.
The Whitney, like the Guggenheim, is also planning to cut its scheduled roster of exhibitions in 2002. An exhibition of works by Eva Hesse, the minimalist sculptor, which was coming on loan from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has been canceled, while another exhibition by Michal Rovner, a contemporary artist, is now on hold while a search for sponsors continues, said Mary Haus, the museum's spokeswoman.
The museum's 2002 Biennial Exhibition, a traditional showcase for contemporary American artists, will take place as planned from March to May next year.
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Maxwell Anderson, director of the Whitney, said these and other cutbacks would save about $1 million in the museum's current $23 million operating budget. The 2001-2 budget year, which began on July 1, had already anticipated a deficit, but Mr. Anderson said the decisions taken by the museum's board of trustees on Thursday should bring the budget almost into balance.
The Whitney is also getting a boost from a three-year, $4.5 million grant given by Tyco International Ltd. in support of the museum's traveling exhibitions. Mr. Anderson said that the grant would help both promote the museum's collection of American art and underwrite costs for the exhibition staff at the New York museum.
"We have no intention of keeping the institution from growing just because of a short-term problem," he said.
With the exception of one curatorial assistant, most of the staff cuts have come in the administrative and support staff, including those on the Whitney's Web site, which will now be managed outside the museum.
Attendance at museums around New York has dropped sharply since the Sept. 11 attacks, but Mr. Anderson said the problem at the Whitney was not the number of visitors, but rather the number of visitors who pay the $10 admission fee. "Attendance is up," Mr. Anderson said, "but what is strange is that admission income is down to a dramatic extent."
The reason, he explained, is that the Whitney is now getting an average of 14,000 visitors a week, many of them members, students and others eligible for discounted admission. That number has apparently been increased by the success of an exhibit of works by Jacob Lawrence, the African-American artist, which opened Nov. 8. In the previous weeks, the Whitney was averaging closer to 9,000 visitors a week, which represented a drop from last year's average of 12,500 for the same fall period.
The 40 percent drop in paid admissions, which this year represents 11.4 percent of the museum's operating income, is largely attributable to the drop in out-of-town visitors. Studies show that, like the Guggenheim, half of the Whitney's admissions are non- New Yorkers.
As yet, there are no signs of a rebound in tourism, even as the typically heavy Christmas season gets under way, Mr. Anderson said. "The feeling is that we will have to wait a couple of months," he said. "But we are not waiting around to find out. That is what this decision is all about." |
