Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museum Funding-Fundraising

Stealthily, The Barnes Foundation Hikes Admission Prices

Late last month, I finally got to the New Barnes Foundation in downtown Philadelphia. It’s always a pleasure to see those paintings, but I tend to agree with the commenters who’ve found the replication of the old hanging in the new building to be jarring. Kind of old wine in new bottles — doesn’t work for me. I tried to forget where I was and just focus on the pictures. But it felt more cramped than it did in Merion, possibly because there were many more people in the galleries.

Postman-vGWhich brings me to the news: The Barnes did not put out a press release on this, but as of May 1, it is raising prices. General admission, which used to be $18 for non-members, is jumping to $22. Seniors will pay $20 instead of $15. Students will pay $10, as before. That’s steep — almost on par with the Metropolitan Museum, where the $25 admission is suggested, and which is much, much bigger. Senior admission at the Met is $17. Students should pay $12.

I learned about this from a blog item on Philly.post, which referred me to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer last week. It said:

Officials at the gallery on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway said that the …main motive was to relieve congestion during high-traffic periods and to increase use of the Barnes audio guide, which now carries injunctions about appropriate gallery behavior.

The audio guide is included in the new ticket price.

The gallery will also extend its free admission for the first Sunday of every month to cover the entire day, not just afternoons. Tickets are still required for those days.

Well, they could have limited the tickets sold, couldn’t they have? Not quite:

“We’re seeing many more people not familiar . . . with what is proper behavior,” said Derek Gillman, the Barnes’ president and chief executive. He added that the gallery wanted those additional visitors, but with new gallerygoers “we’re seeing more transgressions of people touching things and getting too close” to the art, he said.

The audio guide now cautions visitors against touching art and standing too close to paintings and sculptures.

Ouch. Having just been there, I know that it’s difficult to stay as far away from the paintings as recommended, as marked in the flooring — it seems to me to be much further than other museums enforce, and — given the number of people in the galleries — it’s hard to avoid stepping over the line in certain spots. While I was there, the guards were quite aggressive about enforcing the space restrictions.

Presumably this is a reason Barnes limited visitors to his galleries, and another reason for leaving this collection in Merion.

I do not know what the capacity is, but back in January, the Inquirer reported that the New Barnes was exceeding expectations: “…From its May 19 public opening through the end of 2012, the gallery drew 216,953 visitors, according to Barnes records, exceeding the preopening estimate of 200,000 for the period by 8.5 percent….”

That’s great. But if the real reason for raising prices is behavioral — about 40% of visitors had been paying $5 for the audioguide, which is now included in the admission — this could have been handled better. Too, it should have been disclosed in a press release, or on the website – which I could find, except that if you’re buying a ticket for April, you’re paying a lower price than if you’re going in May.

Photo Credit: The Postman, Vincent van Gogh, Courtesy of the Barnes

 

Should We Expect More Museum Cutbacks? — UPDATED

As they always say, if you’ve got three, you’ve got a trend. I have only two, but I wonder if more museum cutbacks are coming. UPDATE –see comment below. Now we do have three examples.

DBolgerBEarlier this week, the Baltimore Museum of Art awarded pink slips to 14 employees, or 9 percent of the 154-member staff., according to The Baltimore Sun. The 14 included 11  full-time exployees and three part-timers. Here’s the background:

The job cuts are needed to make up a projected deficit of more than $500,000 by  July 1, according to museum director Doreen Bolger (left), and to accommodate a budget  that is shrinking by $1 million from its current level of $12.9 million for the  2012-2013 fiscal year.

“We did everything we could think of over the past five years to avoid  reaching this point, including salary reductions, furloughs and trying to find  ways to raise more money,” Bolger said. Bolger said staff cuts were necessary to avoid trimming programs that  directly affect museum visitors. At the moment, there are no plans to reduce  hours.

The museum will also remain free and its renovation will go on. More financial details are here.

You’ll remember that a few weeks ago, the Indianapolis Museum of Art laid off 11% of its staff.

As I recall, charitable donations to the arts rose only slightly last year, though according to a recently released survey in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, 70% of charitable organizations expect a rise in donations this year. I don’t know why they are optimistic, considering that the economy remains weakish, European countries said again recently that they will remain on an austerity kick, and President Obama has declined to drop the idea of a cap on charitable donations by the wealthy — the very ones who give to the arts.

I think this will continue to be a tough year – I’m a contrarian versus that 70%. I do expect more job loses at art museums, whether by layoff or by attrition. I would love to be proven wrong.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Bucknell

The Billion-Dollar Cubist Gift: Donor-Wise

As director Thomas P. Campbell said in the Metropolitan Museum’s press release announcing Leonard Lauder’s promised gift of his collection of Cubist art, it is “truly transformational for the Metropolitan Museum.”

Leger-TypographerI wish it were transformational for other collectors and would-be donors of art to museum. With this gift, Lauder showed the way — much as he did in 2008. Then, within days of the announcement of Stephen A. Schwarzman’s $100 million gift to the New York Public Library, he gave $137 million to the Whitney.

But contrast the difference: because of the Schwarzman gift, The New York Times said at the time, “The 1911 Beaux Arts structure on Fifth Avenue will be called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building after construction is completed around 2014.”  And Paul LeClerc, then library president, said “We hope to incise the name of the building in stone in a subtle, discreet way on either side of the main entrance.” In reality, the incising has already been done — five times on the building, and not so discreetly. Every piece of paper that emanates from the Library has Schwarzman’s name on it.

The Lauder gift to the Whitney, on the other hand, involved no naming rights — though some galleries there had been named for Lauder in the past. It did come with strings — it “required the museum not to sell its Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue at 75th Street for an extended period.” But it also came with this little item: “The gift includes $6 million to cover expenses until the donation is complete, which is expected to be by June 30, 2009.” (Whether Schwarzman has completed his gift is unclear — there was talk at the time of his spreading out payments on the pledge for several years.)

This time, Lauder has given the Met art it needs to tell the history of Western art — with no strings on display, no demands that it be kept together, or never lent, or any of those foolish conditions that were part of gifts by Robert Lehman, Belle  Linsky, and others. (As one Met person told me recently, people often say the Met has no Melendez in its collection, for example — but it does. It has a great one that’s tucked away in the Jack and Belle Linsky galleries, where few people go.)

Endowing (partly) a research center to go with his Cubist gift is another Lauder trademark (the $22 million for this is funded by grants from many supporters, including Lauder). From the release:

The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art will be the first such center dedicated exclusively to modern art within an encyclopedic museum. It will serve as a leading center for scholarship on Cubism and modern art, distinguished by its intellectual rigor and range, and its resources available for study. The Center will bring together renowned scholars, fellows, and curators for focused inquiry within the rich global context of the Metropolitan’s collection….

…Under the auspices of the Center, the Metropolitan will award four two-year fellowships annually for pre- and post-doctoral work and invite senior scholars for residencies at the Museum. Through a program of lectures, study workshops, dossier exhibitions, publications, and a vibrant web presence, the Center will focus art-historical study and public attention on modernism generally and on Cubism in particular, and serve as a training ground for the next generation of scholars. The Center will also include a library and an archive on Cubism donated by Mr. Lauder.

LLauderWhen Lauder gave postcard collection to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he also endowed a curator’s position, held by Benjamin Weiss, the Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Visual Culture.

In other words, while Lauder doesn’t shy from taking credit, what he does do that should be more widespread is think through his gift — and he ends up ensuring what’s best for the objects and the public, not just himself.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum (top – Leger’s Typographer)

 

 

 

UK Museums Learn How To Ask For Money

British art groups are, like their counterparts here, experiencing economic difficulties, not least there because the government, including local councils, have slashed the amount of aid it provides.

imagesPartly in response to a comment made last year by culture secretary Maria Miller — that arts groups must “get better at asking, not just receiving,” 11 museums and theatres in Britain have developed a new smart phone app, designed to trigger on-site giving — while people are appreciative of what they are seeing. It’s a new National Funding Scheme, and it charges each participating institution 4% to be part of it. There are more details about the scheme in this press release.

According to a report in last Wednesday’s Independent, the day the app went live, the groups — which include the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum —

hope to play on “emotionally charged” culture lovers and persuade them to support exhibits and performances with a touch of a button on their mobile phone….

…In the participating venues will be a panel next to an exhibit, or in the auditorium explaining the cause highlighted. Each case has a unique code which can be texted in from any mobile phone, or scanned in using android or apple smartphones.

This is a six-month “trial run,” The Independent said. If you go here, you can see that the National Funding Scheme also suggests ways arts enthusiasts might be otherwise involved, doing simple things like spreading the word. (While I was on the site, I clicked on the “Culture Juice” link to see what that was all about — it has a few lessons in social marketing, the best one of which is about email marketing.)

I think this scheme has to be done with care. A really big “panel” asking for donations could be offputting. Putting one before and after might also be obtrusive.

Two years ago, though, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston put a collection box near Chihuly’s Lime Green Icicle Tower and activated its first mobile giving scheme, allowing people to give $10 with a text message. Many other causes now ask for donations by text.

So it can be done well. Also, I don’t see why museums can’t do this on their own, without a national scheme. Maybe some have already. I don’t think it’s that hard to set up.

 

 

 

Consolation Prize: $17 Million For Old Masters

Back in December, I wrote here that the bid by the Dallas Museum of Art to buy the recently discovered Leonardo, Salvator Mundi, had failed — not enough money to satisfy the owners, who reportedly wanted $200 million but had agreed to settle for somewhat less to see it go to Dallas. Alas, the gap was too big.

marguerite-hoffman-img_0092Today the museum announced that good things can come from failure: one of the donors to the fundraising drive, trustee and past chairman Marguerite Steed Hoffman (left), has decided to establish of a $17 million endowment for European art created before 1700: $13.6 million will be a restricted acquisitions endowment and $3.4  million will go to an operating endowment in support of pre-1700 European acquisitions, exhibitions, and programs. As the press release said, “this new fund more than doubles the DMA’s acquisition endowment and brings total funds in support of the Museum’s acquisitions to 50,000,000.”

The museum talks about its strength in late 19th- and early 20th-century European works, “with the most significant collection of French impressionism and post-impressionism in the region.” (That’s not that hard… given Dallas’s location in north Texas.) “But its collection of old master paintings is comparatively modest,” the release says.

What’s very nice is that Hoffman and her late husband are collectors of contemporary art:

Even prior to this gift, Marguerite and Robert Hoffman were already among the greatest benefactors in the Museum’s history. In February 2005, the Dallas Museum of Art announced the unprecedented gift of modern and contemporary collections from Marguerite and Robert Hoffman, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, and Deedie and Rusty Rose. The idea behind the joint gift came from the Hoffmans, who at the time co-chaired the Centennial Campaign, which was launched in 2003–04 to ensure the Dallas Museum of Art’s continuing stability and growth. To jump-start the campaign, the Hoffmans issued a bold challenge: If the Museum reached its goal for the first phase of the campaign, they would bequeath to the Dallas Museum of Art their art collection and an endowment to care for the collection as well as make a generous gift to the campaign. Their action provided the foundation for a successful campaign that ultimately raised over $185 million.

More details here.

What’s also nice is that prices for Renaissance and Baroque art are sometimes low enough for the museum to make significant purchases if it shops wisely and accumulates funds from year to year. I hope Dallas does not ignore Old Master sculpture.