The American Alliance of Museums, an organization that solely represents all museums across the country, issued a dire warning on Wednesday that one-third of museums risk permanently closing as funding sources dwindle as a result of the COVID-19 closures.
Damn shame. My first communications job was with a regional museum and they struggle to keep the lights on in a good year.
Just another facet of the GOP valiant efforts to crush arts, culture, and history.
It is time to reduce and NOT increase (by $2 Billion) the military budget and redirect those tax dollars to healthcare, pandemic aid, social works/hunger insecurity, voting/election security and the arts!
After all, in the Trump Mal-Admin, they are being displayed in Trump’s parade and used as Trump’s thugs against Americans to suppress their constitutional rights so that Trump & cronies can stay in power and bilk the government!
Museums are but one of dozens upon dozens of entities that will forever be culled from our lives due to this pandemic.
Given how many billions Bezos is said to have made due to the pandemic, I suggest there’s something he could do with a fraction of it.
Nine eleven were were told, “changed everything”. Trump flu syndrome delivers on that promise.
He could offer Trump a billion to resign right now and the White House would be vacant by midnight.
This tears me up.
States aren’t going to have it. States are going to take another revenue hit that will, once again, cause them to decide they spend too much on mental health and child protection.
Yeah and people who play games for a living are making out like bandits while things that have actual relevance to creating better humans are left to die.
I think you’re right about that. Certainly if he offered a half billion to each of the kids and Melania, they’d be outie in a heartbeat.
The Universities with huge endowments may be the only Museums that can weather this long-term.
The major metropolitan museums with massive endowments and fundraising operations will probably be ok: The Met, the Getty, Art Institute of Chicago, etc. It’s the smaller regional museums, orchestras, and cultural centers, the ones that contribute enormously to what little cultural life there is in smaller cities or rural areas and rely on much more modest donor bases, that are incredibly endangered.
And it’s hard to ask people to give money when they’re worried about covering their mortgage or their health insurance. It’s not just the closings, it’s the overall disaster. (At one small nonprofit I know, the PPP funding just about covered the spring fundraising shortfall…)
A lot of smaller nonprofits are hurting, too.
The do-good groups that get funding from my church are screaming for help. We held a virtual talent show/fundraiser for the lot of them last evening. Our tad-obsessive-compulsive head pastor poked fun at himself by showing us his one non-spiritual talent: how to organize a sock drawer.
This issue of protecting our cultural patrimony is one of the few things that Boris Johnson’s government in England has been sensitive to, and it has been conspicuously missing here. The Johnson ministry has allocated £1.57 billion in stimulus spending – about $2 billion US at exchange rates but probably closer to $2.2 billion in purchasing power – for cultural institutions including museums and historic buildings, performing arts including theater and music, and independent cinema.
Donate to the smaller 501c)(3) museums you like if you can.
