Metropolitan Museum of Art Completes Job Reductions

Randy Kennedy of the NY Times is reporting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has completed its planned staff reductions. In total the museum has either laid off or given early retirement to a total of 169 employees. Earlier this year and reported on the AW Blog the Met closed 15 satellite retail stores, letting 127 people go in the process. The job reductions are expected to save nearly $10 million annually, but it is still not enough to completely reduce future deficits. A possible reduction in exhibitions is also a possibility.

Kennedy states The overall cuts leave the museum staff 14 percent smaller, with about 2,200 full-time and part-time employees. The goal of the cuts had been a 10 percent reduction, but the number of employees who took voluntary retirement was much higher than the museum had expected.“This realignment is a painful but unavoidable consequence of the global financial crisis,” James R. Houghton, the museum’s chairman, said in a written statement, adding that he believed the cuts “placed the institution on a sure footing to manage its resources over the next 12 months” without any serious cuts to programming.

Kennedy continues The museum joins many others across the country that are retrenching in similar or more extreme ways, cutting budgets, staff and the kinds of expansion plans that seemed ubiquitous only a couple of years ago. Among those that have imposed layoffs are the Cincinnati Art Museum, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The Guggenheim Museum announced last week that it would reduce its full-time staff by 8 percent through layoffs and positions left vacant.

To read the full NY Times article, click HERE.