SFMOMA Lays Off an Additional 55 Staff Members as Museums Prepare for a Reckoning Heading Into a New Fiscal Year

In the weeks after museums across the United States closed their
doors to preserve public health in March, a steady drumbeat of layoffs
and furlough announcements plagued the sector.
Among those making dramatic cutbacks was the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art, which laid off or furloughed some 60 percent of its
more than 500-person staff. Now, as the museum prepares to enter a
new fiscal year in July, it is making another round of cutbacks,
laying off 55 people from a variety of departments last week.

The news may send a shudder down the spines of museum workers,
considering that many hoped that loans from the Paycheck Protection
Program and progress toward reopening in many states would stave
off a second round of layoffs. But a spokesperson for SFMOMA told
Artnet News that the measures were necessary in light of a
projected deficit of $18 million for the fiscal year of 2021. (This
is on top of the projected $7 million deficit for the fiscal year
of 2020, which the museum announced when it made its initial staff cuts in
March.) The losses are compounded by new reopening guidelines
announced by the city of San Francisco that delays the museum’s
planned reopening from July to mid-August, the spokesperson
said.

The cutbacks may be particularly unsettling considering the
museum received a $6.2 million loan from the federal Paycheck
Protection Program in April, which enabled it to lift a previous
furlough on 156 employees and pay staff in full through June 30.
(Notably, a group of 135 on-call employees who were laid off in
March were not reinstated; those layoffs, plus the latest round,
accounts for almost 40 percent of the museum’s pre-shutdown
staff.)

The museum declined to specify how many of the laid-off staffers
had previously been on furlough, but said they will receive
severance based on tenure (up to a maximum of 24 weeks’ pay), COBRA
health-insurance coverage paid for by the museum, and job search
assistance. A representative for the museum’s union, which
negotiated severance packages for its members, confirmed SFMOMA is
compensating staff and offering health care through July 31.

Notably, the layoffs were preceded by a rare public missive from
SFMOMA’s staff beseeching the museum to preserve jobs. In fact,
staff members who wrote the open letter even
offered to have their own pay or hours reduced in order to share
the burden. (The signatories remained anonymous online, but a
source told Artnet News it was written by a mix of union and
non-union staffers.)

“Staff at all levels have offered to decrease their hours or
pay, to share what workload exists in order to preserve all of our
jobs,” the letter’s authors wrote. “This is a proven strategy, used
by forward-thinking businesses to survive downturns without
layoffs.”

The letter also took aim at director Neal Benezra’s salary,
suggesting that his voluntary pay cut—50 percent for several
months—is not enough. One former staffer called it “a drop in the
bucket” in a phone conversation with Artnet News. (Benezra made
just shy of $1 million in 2018, the most recent information
available, according to tax filings.)

“Even after taking a 50 percent pay cut, Neal Benezra earns more
in one month than a full-time frontline staff member earns in an
entire year,” the letter states. “At the start of this crisis the
top 20 earners took a meager 10 percent salary cut, but those cuts
are set to end at the same time that layoffs are scheduled to be
announced.”

Asked if the museum had considered the requests made in the
letter, the spokesperson told Artnet News: “These
were difficult and painful decisions for us. The museum explored
all potential options but unfortunately, with an $18 million
deficit ahead of us, we needed to both scale back and restructure
our program and operations to be financially sustainable for the
long term.” 

The spokesperson said the museum is pursuing additional measures
to make up the shortfall, including a reduced exhibition schedule,
reduced expenses, redirected accession funds, increased trustee
support, fundraising, and potential deaccessioning.

This is not the only challenge the museum faced last week. News
of the layoffs came as the museum was under fire for
its response to the countrywide protests against police
brutality. SFMOMA was one of several art institutions called out
for tepid statements that failed to mention George Floyd, racism,
police, or Black Lives Matter. The backlash grew after the museum
deleted a critical
comment from Taylor Brandon, a black former employee.

“The issues are all
interrelated,” a former SFMOMA staffer told Artnet News. “For a
long time, the museum has not been doing enough around racial
justice and it’s driven out a good number of employees for that
specific reason… labor
equity goes hand in hand with racial justice and SFMOMA has
drastically failed here.”

In a later post, Benezra publicly apologized to Brandon, who, he
said, “raised serious and important concerns.” In an email to
museum supporters over the weekend, he pledged to enact new
policies, including setting firm and clear targets to dramatically
increase the representation of African American employees and
growing the museum’s collection of work by artists of color. “Just
as our country must do better, so must we,” he wrote.

The post SFMOMA Lays Off an Additional 55 Staff Members as
Museums Prepare for a Reckoning Heading Into a New Fiscal Year
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