The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Thje NY Times just posted an interesting article on some issues facing the Met, including deficits, layoffs, poorly received new logo,building cost overruns and building delays of several years on a new wing. The article also states Met employees are also concerned with the various problems and and compensation cuts and morale is low.

The NY Times reports

The bad news had been building for months at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Even as crowds poured into shows on Hellenistic kingdoms and high-tech fashion, the Met’s deficit was approaching $40 million and had forced the buyout or layoff of some 90 employees. An expansion into a satellite building cost millions of dollars more than expected. A new Met logo and marketing plan were rolled out at great expense — and greeted with ridicule. Then, last month, a new $600 million wing was postponed by several years, frustrating the Met’s efforts to become a serious player in the competitive field of Modern and contemporary art.

Tension inside the Met, the country’s largest art museum, is running so high that when curators and conservators recently wrote a letter protesting compensation cuts, the museum’s leaders chose not to show it to trustees for fear of leaks and bad publicity. Those who wanted to see the document had to go to the office of the Met’s general counsel and read it under observation.

After enjoying boom years, one of the most pre-eminent cultural institutions in the world is now struggling with missteps and the perils of overreaching at a time of uncertain resources. While many museums face financial and competitive pressures, the Met’s troubles are magnified, given its stature on the world stage.

How can a behemoth like the Met, the thinking goes, possibly stumble? Some curators and trustees have zeroed in on Thomas P. Campbell, the Met’s director and chief executive since 2008, as well as the board that has backed him. The anguish can be intense, given the love that all involved have for the Met.

“It’s a tragedy to see a great institution in decline,” said George R. Goldner, who in 2014 retired after 21 years as the chairman of the Met’s drawings and prints department and has since served as a consultant to the museum. “To have inherited a museum as strong as the Met was 10 years ago — with a great curatorial staff — and to have it be what it is today is unimaginable.”

Several people inside the museum, most of whom spoke anonymously for fear of losing their positions, said the Met under Mr. Campbell had tried to do too much too fast: overhiring in the digital department; overspending on an additional building, the Met Breuer, and on rebranding; overdrawing from unrestricted endowment funds to cover costs; emphasizing Modern and contemporary art at the expense of core departments; and pursuing the new wing before the financing was in place.

Instead, the Met should have been contracting, given falling revenue from its retail stores and admission fees and rising expenses.

At the same time, some hope that by reckoning with its troubles, the Met is poised to turn a corner.

“We’re getting to the same page,” said Keith Christiansen, the chairman of the Met’s European paintings department. “One benefit from all this: It’s brought the departments together with the administration to sit down at a common table, and that’s something. Now what do we do to move forward and make sure the mission of the museum is not compromised?”

Efforts to right the ship have been difficult and painful. In addition to staff cuts, curators were asked to curtail spending for shows and acquisitions. The Met stages nearly 60 exhibitions a year, far more than most museums, but now expects to reduce its exhibitions to about 40 a year.

Instead of moving forward with the architect David Chipperfield on a wing intended to help attract art and money from contemporary collectors, the Met has been forced to prioritize the replacement of its aging skylights and roof above the European paintings galleries.

In an interview, Mr. Campbell acknowledged that the museum had “been through a trying year.”

“My colleagues have every right to feel upset,” he said. “At the same time, one has to step back and look at the success of the institution.”

To be sure, most agree that the museum’s expansive collections and ambitious exhibitions remain strong. The recent Kerry James Marshall survey at the Met Breuer was widely judged a success, though some critics say the museum’s first retrospective of a living black artist would have been even more momentous in the hallowed main building.

In addition, the museum’s attendance has increased to about seven million visitors a year, including the Cloisters. The Breuer, which opened in March, has drawn 557,000 visitors, exceeding projections.

“We’ve got a whole Modern art collection in the Breuer we didn’t have before,” said Hamilton E. James, a Met trustee. “Attendance is at all-time records; critical acclaim has never been as good. An awful lot of wonderful things have gone on.”

Moreover, Met officials say, many cultural institutions have been grappling with a structural deficit — when costs exceed revenues, despite a strong economy. The Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum, for example, also recently offered buyouts — though they did not then move to layoffs. The New York Philharmonic has delayed the tentative date for opening its $600 million rebuilt hall to get a better sense of its cost. And the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is struggling to raise nearly half the $600 million needed for its expansion.

While the Met charged Mr. Campbell with strengthening the museum’s Modern and contemporary art activities, his focus on the Met Breuer and new wing has been controversial. Why try to compete with the new Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, some ask, instead of sticking to what the Met already does best?

Mr. Campbell said he had aimed “to sustain an environment in which scholarship could flourish and be the engine of our program, as well as to expand our audiences, to digitize the institution and to revisit what it is to be an encyclopedic museum.”

“We’ve made remarkable progress, but these things are flexible, and they need modulation,” he added. “In the same period, we have had to balance our expenditures and our income. In light of that, we’re certainly doing some recalibration on the goals we’ve set ourselves.”

Some critics say Mr. Campbell has been out of his depth — a tapestry curator thrust into the large shoes of the legendary Philippe de Montebello, with no experience running a major institution. (Mr. de Montebello did not have chief executive in his title until 22 years into his 31-year tenure as director.)

Moreover, Mr. Campbell, by many accounts, has handled the economic crisis by hunkering down in a defensive crouch rather than reaching out to unite the staff — and the full board — behind his efforts. Internal critics say he failed to appreciate the upheaval caused by the turnover of three-quarters of the curatorial leadership through departures and retirements. They describe the pervasive sense that institutional memory is going out the door and the fear that the Met’s mission to educate through scholarship has been overshadowed by its desire to attract millennials through social media.

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Source: The NY Times