‘Painful decisions’ hamper museums
Top institutions hit by furloughs, salary cuts, layoffs amid outbreak
Caught up in the region’s efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus, the Bay Area’s most prominent museums are gasping for air.
From salary cuts and furloughs to exhibition cancellations and permanent layoffs, the institutions charged with preservation and interpretation of our culture are planning to make many of the hard choices faced by forprofit businesses, according to details shared with The Chronicle. But they also have concerns unique to their scientific or artistic missions.
“With the shelterinplace shutdown, we had little choice but to furlough 70% of our staff,” George Jacob, president and CEO of the Bay Ecotarium, parent organization of the Aquarium on the Bay, told The Chronicle.
The San Jose Museum of Art has made “the painful decision to temporarily decrease the size of our team,” including layoffs of visitor services and museum store staff, museum officials said. Leaders at the Contemporary Jewish Museum said they “will continue to pay regular fulland parttime employees through April 30,” but “oncall exhibition and AV techs and event coordinators have not had work to conduct.”
On April 1, the California Academy of Sciences announced to staff that “leadership is currently evaluating personnel plans, beginning in May, which may include hour reductions, furloughs or layoffs.”
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, umbrella organization for the de Young and Legion of Honor museums, are “not planning furloughs or layoffs at this time” for regular staff, but have reduced employment of external contractors and paid oncall personnel only through shifts scheduled before the shutdown, a statement said.
These actions follow earlier decisions by the Exploratorium to make changes and reductions affecting about 85% of its staff, and by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to lay off, furlough and reduce hours for 326 oncall and regular employees.
Every museum contacted by The Chronicle in the past week pledged to look for ways to ameliorate the effect of the cuts on valued staff. And every museum is amping up its digital offerings, showing extraordinary growth of online audiences. But no one, of course, could predict what
the future might hold if shelterinplace orders continue in effect through the spring or beyond.
SFMOMA has said it expects to lose $8 million in earned income through June. FAMSF projects a $9 million loss through the same period.
The Academy of Sciences, the region’s institutional behemoth, funds most of its annual budget of $70 million from earned revenue — admissions, sales in shops and food service, space rentals and so forth. But 25% comes from donations each year, executive director Scott Sampson told The Chronicle.
“All the projections are suggesting that giving will fall,” he said. “A lot of the foundations and corporations will turn to giving for social needs; that is what happened in 2008” during the previous recession.
To be the director of a respected museum in a major city can be a marvelous thing. There’s the prestige and the social influence, and the pay is not bad, either. But it is at times like this that museum directors must prove their worth.
Across the region, directors are taking voluntary salary cuts even as they ratchet up efforts at fundraising, worry over the financial wellbeing of their employees and keeping staffs intact, and plan for what comes next.
That last is what Lori Fogarty, director of the Oakland Museum of California, said is the most difficult thing.
“Clearly, it’s the uncertainty. Not knowing how long this is going to go on, and how the public is going to feel when we do reopen,” she said.
Her concerns were echoed by Jason Linetsky, director of the Anderson Collection at Stanford University. “What will the visitor reaction be to gathering again in shared spaces?” he asked.
It’s an even more pressing question for science museums, known for their handson interactive exhibits.
“Are people going to want their kids to engage in the same way in the future?” Sampson asked. “It is going to reinvent the museum world.
“If you go back in the 166year history of the academy,” he continued, quoting a board member, “this is the greatest challenge the museum has faced — the greatest disaster since the 1906 fire and earthquake.”
All museums have a primary duty to care for the collections they hold and interpret for the public. Art museums, which often hold works valued in the millions of dollars, generally have 24hour security staffs. They also have to keep climate control systems operating to protect the art — Oakland’s monthly utility bill is $50,000 — but with lowered light levels and no visitors to monitor, some conservation concerns are actually reduced during this time.
That is not the case for museums with collections that are alive. In addition to the 46 million inanimate objects in the California Academy, its displays include almost 40,000 live animals that require “a whole lot of care and feeding,” Sampson said. Three different teams of biologists share that responsibility. The teams are kept apart from each other to improve the odds that at least one group will be available if another becomes ill.
Similarly, the Aquarium of the Bay holds 24,000 animals and 186 species in 750,000gallon saltwater tanks, with caretakers on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park holds approximately 2,000 “accessions” — museumspeak for objects (in this case, individual plants) officially entered into the collection record, according to Director Matthew Stephens. They are maintained in a tropical environment by a team of four master horticulturists, in a building that is itself a significant object, “the only 141yearold wooden greenhouse in the country,” Stephens said.
Stephens worries as much as any director about what is in store for his institution. Each of the past five years has seen an increase in attendance. Now he expects a drop, he said, of 20% or more — “hopefully no greater than 50%.” Yet he is certain there will continue to be a need for museums like his.
“People will be looking for real experiences once this ends,” Stephens said. “The conservatory is a unique place in the world, as it is in San Francisco. It is a very real experience. We have orchids that grow in places that are impossible to get to now.
“We have one spectacular plant ... with 5 or 6foot leaves, and it’s flowering now. The earliest flowering Victoria lily in all of North America. And we wish we could share it.”