The Metropolitan Museum of Art Is Bracing for a $100 Million Shortfall as Leadership Pivots to Highlight the Institution’s Digital Offerings

Now that the Metropolitan Museum of Art will likely remain closed
until July, with museum leadership expecting a budget shortfall
of as much as $100 million, one of the most famous art museums in
the world is being forced to make some difficult decisions.

While art institutions with smaller purses—which is to say,
essentially all other museums—scramble to estimate the impact of
weeks of closures due to the coronavirus on their bottom line, the
Met is already shifting its message, calling attention to its
expanded online offerings while its doors remain closed to the
public.

“This is forcing us to be a bit more nimble,” Met director Max
Hollein told Artnet News in a phone interview from his office at
the museum (where, he said, the facilities team is hard at work,
but he is safely remaining six feet away from others).

“The Met is always used to doing everything absolutely
perfectly. We’re learning to make things great, but they don’t
have to be perfect.”

Since it became one of the first American museums
to close its doors last Thursday, the museum has entirely
overhauled the front page of its website to promote its expansive
digital content, which includes its famed Timeline of Art History and a dedicated
site for kids. A spokesperson says the museum’s YouTube views are
up 150 percent compared to the weekly average, while traffic to the
dedicated MetKids site
has spiked a staggering 833 percent.

Moving forward, the museum’s staff—including its digital team of
more than 50 people—is working to adapt previously planned public
programs to the web. Curators, for example, are now preparing to
give talks from their own homes.

The expansion of digital initiatives will likely be cold comfort
to the many Met staff members who are fearing for their jobs and
wondering about the fate of their work in light of an email from
museum leadership yesterday that spelled out the dire consequences
of the museum’s shutdown and the economy’s nosedive.

Hollein and Daniel Weiss, the museum’s CEO, explained that they
had devised a three-phase response to the crisis. They told staff
they could expect to be paid through April 4, after which
leadership would evaluate potential layoffs, voluntary retirements,
and furloughs.

Between April and June, they said, the museum will work to
reduce operating costs by potentially instituting freezes on hiring
and discretionary spending as well as launching a budget and
staffing review. By July, they anticipate the museum will reopen
with a “reduced program and lower cost structure and lower
attendance for at least the next year due to reduced global and
domestic tourism and spending.”

Hollein told Artnet News that he expected some major exhibitions
planned for the fall to be postponed for one to two years. The
museum is also in the process of working to extend some
high-profile shows that had recently opened, like the Gerhard
Richter survey at the Met Breuer (open for nine days before the
museum’s closure), as well as “Making the Met,” the museum’s
150th-anniversary exhibition, which was due to open on March 30 and
was almost fully installed when the museum closed its doors.

To help offset its projected shortfall, the Met plans to create
a $50 million emergency fund by reallocating discretionary
resources toward operating expenses—specifically, money that was
otherwise earmarked for acquisitions, programming, and educational
initiatives. That means “the museum will acquire way less [art] this year than it used to in the past,” Hollein said. Beyond that,
he noted, “I don’t think that our audience will see a big
effect.”

Asked why the museum did not consider dipping into its over $3
billion endowment instead of pursuing cutbacks and layoffs, Hollein
said, “We have a responsibility for the longevity of the
institution and the sustainability of the
institution….  Although our endowment is big, it has a
lot of different restrictions and we don’t want to reduct it for
future generations.”

Meanwhile, Hollein added, the museum’s leadership continues to
have backchannel conversations with other top New York museum
leaders to petition foundations and governments to offer relief
sector-wide. The museum’s own approach is not “supposed to be
sending any kind of negative messages or creating more tension,” he
said. “This is completely new terrain for all of us.”

The post The Metropolitan Museum of Art Is Bracing for a
$100 Million Shortfall as Leadership Pivots to Highlight the
Institution’s Digital Offerings appeared first on artnet
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