Amid a ballooning deficit that would strategy $10m by June, the Brooklyn Museum plans to put off 47 workers members. The information was first reported by Hyperallergic and The New York Occasions on 7 February.
The museum’s director Anne Pasternak knowledgeable workers by way of electronic mail that the museum was “experiencing robust headwinds: inflation has dramatically impacted our working price range, including thousands and thousands of {dollars} to on a regular basis prices and outpacing funding”. The monetary precarity was “additional compounded by sluggish post-pandemic attendance restoration throughout the sector”, she added.
The layoffs will have an effect on employees in a mix of union and non-union jobs, each full- and part-time. Based on Hyperallergic, an official at Native 1502—a division of the District Council 37 union that represents artwork handlers, curatorial assistants and upkeep employees—famous that they discovered concerning the layoffs solely a day earlier than different workers on the museum, on 6 February. Given the timing of the layoffs, this will violate a breach of the union’s contract; the union has despatched a cease-and-desist letter to cease the museum from making these cuts. The proposed layoffs, affecting round 10% of the museum’s workforce, are as a consequence of take impact in March.
So as to assist redress the museum’s present monetary state of affairs, leaders additionally introduced a hiring freeze, in addition to wage cuts of 10% to twenty% for senior management. The museum may even mount fewer exhibitions, scaling again from 12 a yr to simply 9 reveals. Moreover, there will likely be fewer weeknight occasions, which will likely be countered by extra weekend programming.
Based on Pasternak, the museum’s working price range for fiscal yr 2025 is $64m and salaries make up 70% of it. These are the primary main layoffs on the museum since 2020, on the top of the pandemic. That yr the museum let go of near 30 workers members.
Regardless of its monetary woes, the museum is coming off a blockbuster 2024, which marked the bicentennial of its founding and included widespread exhibitions like Giants: Artwork from the Dean Assortment of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, Paul McCartney Pictures 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm and Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies. The museum additionally launched a brand new model identification timed to its two hundredth anniversary. Pasternak wrote in her letter to workers final week that’s “time for reflection” and to “ask necessary questions, confront challenges and advance essential change”. She additionally famous that the layoffs is not going to have an effect on the timeline for the renovation of the museum’s Arts of Africa galleries.
The museum additionally lately misplaced a pair of high-profile workers: on 20 December, Pasternak introduced the departure of chief working officer Kimberly Panicek Trueblood and chief folks officer Allison Avery.
The Brooklyn Museum has typically been the venue, backdrop or goal for political protests, together with a number of pro-Palestine rallies staged for the reason that starting of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October 2023. Final Might, greater than 30 protesters have been arrested throughout a big demonstration that resulted in a number of folks scaling the façade of the museum to hold a banner.
Additionally final yr, Pasternak and Trudeblood’s properties have been focused by vandals who sprayed them with crimson paint and tagged them. Three suspects in these incidents have since been charged with hate crimes.
