Columbus Museum of Art slashes staff
Columbus Museum of Art officials were pleased to be able to reopen in June, but attendance has not been enough to stave off significant budget cuts.
The museum recently announced that as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, 39 positions had been cut — 31% of staff — and that Maciejunes would take a 23% pay cut. Charity Navigator, which compiles data on charities, reported Maciejunes' salary as $260,764 in fiscal year 2018.
The cuts included people in all departments and across all levels of seniority, Maciejunes said.
The result was a trimming of $1 million in payroll. Through that and other reductions in spending, the museum slashed its budget of $12.7 million in the fiscal year 2020 to $8.9 million in fiscal year 2021.
“We did everything we could for seven months,” Maciejunes said, “But what has crushed us is that we get a full third of our revenue from earned income.”
Like so many other businesses and institutions, the museum closed in March. It was bad timing, as it had just opened a major exhibition, “Art After Stonewall: 1969-1989.”
Maciejunes said the museum was fortunate to be able to keep every piece of art loaned for that exhibition until reopening in June, so the exhibit had its full run of more than three months. The last week it was open, she said, featured a high-water mark of attendance: 45% of normal.
In other weeks, though, attendance was hovering at about 25% to 30%, which Maciejunes said “seems to be about the national average, in talking to my colleagues around the country.”
She said the museum offers a lot of virtual content, but makes almost no revenue from those efforts.
The cuts come less than two months after the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University announced it was eliminating six positions and cutting its programming budget. Officials there blamed a “near-total loss of revenue” during the shutdown for the cuts.
Maciejunes said she is hopeful that spring or summer 2021 brings a vaccine and that museums can hold on until then. In July, the American Alliance of Museums released the results of a survey and concluded that up to one-third of museums were at risk of closing by the end of 2020.
“It's very sad because I feel we are needed now more than ever,” Maciejunes said. “In these times of crisis, the arts bring solace and comfort and hope. We make a difference.” kgordon@dispatch.com @kgdispatch