Metropolitan Museum's Annual Report: Big Operating Surplus, Big Debt Increase, Big Lieberman Bequest

The Metropolitan Museum's financial operating results improved by more than $5 million in fiscal 2007 from the results of previous fiscal year, thanks largely to lower pension expenses, higher gains on invested pension assets, and (let us not forget) increased revenue from the controversial hike in the recommended admissions fee from $15 to $20.

According to the museum's recently released annual report (which you can access here), the Met's 2007 operating surplus was $2.05 million, compared to the previous year's deficit of $3.15 million. Attendance increased only slightly, from 4.5 million visitors in fiscal year 2006 to 4.6 million in the current year. But admissions revenue grew 18 percent, thanks to the fee hike. The average per capita take at the admissions cash registers of main building (not including the Cloisters) was up 17 percent.

But the museum's liabilities ballooned some 60 percent, due chiefly to the issuance last December of $130 million in tax-exempt bonds for capital projects. Total 2007 indebtedness was $162.83 million, compared to only $34.9 million the previous year.

The Met spent some $27.49 million on art acquisitions in fiscal 2007, compared to $34.83 million the previous year. Deaccessions totaled $2.13 million, compared to $26.83 million the previous year.

One of the report's surprising revelations was the full extent of the voluminous bequest of works on paper---hundreds of diverse prints and drawings---left to the Met by William Lieberman, the chairman of its modern art department, who died more than two years ago. Before coming to the Met in 1979, he had for many years been a curator at the Museum of Modern Art.

His gifts to the Met, accessioned in 2007, included an enormous number of Japanese prints, as well as numerous prints and drawings ranging from old master to contemporary. You can see these listed, in the above-linked annual report, on pages 11-15, 24, 27-31 and 36-37.

With such an active personal-collecting life, how did Lieberman manage to find the time to acquire for MoMA and the Met?