DATELINE: June 4, 2007, Chicago
We have written extensively during the last two years about the problems facing the Milwaukee Public Museum. In large part, the museum found itself in the precarious financial position due to governance failures. But even if the museum had been well run, it still might be facing fiscal woes. Sunday's L.A. Times carried an article that will have the museum world talking for some time to come. Written by Mike Boehm, the article's title—Nature Museums Nearly Relics Themselves—suggests that with the exception of several very large ones, natural history museums across the country...
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are falling on hard times. Boehm reports that a national survey in 2006 "showed nature museums' annual bottom lines sinking chronically into the red by $300,000 on average, while art museums outperformed them by nearly half a million dollars."
He reports on significant reductions in staff, referring to the process as "self-lobotomies." In doing so, he points out that natural history museums traditionally have had educational staffs that undertake significant research activities. We had the opportunity to speak with a member of the staff of Chicago's Field Museum two years ago. The staff person made clear to us that there was a lot more happening behind the massive columns next to Lake Michigan than we ever realized.
The Milwaukee Public Museum is in good company when it comes to finances. Boehm labels the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia "deficit-ridden." The National History Museum of Los Angeles has cut staff by 7% in an effort to curb what Boehm calls "a long string of deficits." According to Boehm, the American Museum of Natural History in New York also has had to economize, reducing its staff by about 11% during the last seven years (referred to in the article as this decade).
Against this backdrop, we can only wonder whether the Milwaukee Public Museum's recently announced recovery plan represents an ill-conceived effort to save face for the community while deferring the inevitable. See Steve Schultze, Museum Recovery Plan is Endorsed, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, May 21, 2007. The plan calls for Milwaukee County to provide the museum with a $3.5 million annual operating subsidy beginning in 2008 and running through 2017; the museum to conduct what the Journal-Sentinel characterizes as "an ambitious $30 million private fund drive;" M& I and Chase, the two financial institution lenders, to effectively lower interest rates from around 6% to 2% and extend the maturity of the museum's long-term debt; and apparently for Discovery World to forgive $3 million of the $6 million in debt that the museum owes it. We leave it to those who are closer to the numbers to ascertain whether that specific combination will do the immediate trick. Our observation is that the plan focuses on returning the museum to what it was before the financial disaster of two years ago, albeit it with the subsequent significant and apparently permanent curatorial and scientific staff reductions.
There is one overarching flaw in this plan. It ignores the problems reported in the L.A. Times article. If natural history museums across the country are having trouble and those troubles seem to be systemic, does it make sense to restore a failed natural history museum to its tarnished glory? We suspect some of the expenditures for major projects that left the Milwaukee Public Museum, in the words of Boehm, "fiscally prostrate" were made to address the sorts of problems that not only Milwaukee, but other museums were experiencing.
The question is not how the cost of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again should be borne by the major actors in Milwaukee, but rather what sort of museum is both viable and desired by the community. Unfortunately, Milwaukee's leaders have not been willing to have an open and honest discussion about what the community wants and needs. It may be that the best course of action would be to merge the Milwaukee Public Museum and Discovery World; transfer beloved artifacts to Discovery World; sell other, less public assets to natural history museums that are in positions to curate them; use the funds raised through such sales to expand the Discovery World campus; and channel county subsidies to the combined institution. Whether that is the right answer we don't know, but our back of the envelope idea certainly attempts to address the larger issues that the plan to return to the status quo doesn't.
We are particularly troubled by the recurring proposals to bring blockbuster shows to the Milwaukee Public Museum as a cure to its fiscal problems. In 2006 it was the traveling Vatican exhibition. Before that it was Pearls. Now the focus has turned to Body Worlds, which is scheduled to open in January 2008. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the expectations are that the museum will net $1 million from that exhibit. Steve Schultze, Museum Bailout to Cost $13.6 Million for County, May 24, 2007. We don't have anything against such shows. In fact, we rather enjoyed a similar exhibition when it was staged by Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry two summers ago. Our friends from Milwaukee who came down enjoyed it too—we can only wonder whether they will be lined up for a repeat visit in January. The question is whether traveling blockbuster shows drift too far afield from the mission of a natural history museum. A similar question faces jazz festivals that originated in the 50s and 60s. Is it still a jazz festival if Genesis, Michael Bolton, and Diana Ross are the headliners? Those performers draw crowds, but the music, although good, isn't jazz (a la Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Lou Donaldson, Randy Weston, the Bad Plus, or John Zorn).
Milwaukee has some big decisions before it, but because no one has ever honestly and openly dissected the debacle, Milwaukee may find itself facing fiscal problems at the so-called natural history museum a decade from now, assuming some version of the current plan is adopted. From an outsider's viewpoint, the museum's board didn't ask the right questions at the start of the millennium and the community appears on the verge of repeating that same mistake.
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