12 ms·

One-Third of U.S. Museums May Not Survive the Year, Survey Finds

175 points by mrfusion 6y ago

garmaine 6y ago
What happens to the collections...
- trhway 6y ago
  the same as with other assets - we're entering the greatest wealth redistribution (it would for example definitely beat the one triggered by 2008). The smaller and more vulnerable get distressed, and are going to be scooped up on the cheap by the big ones who have access to liquidity.
  - simongr3dal 6y ago
    It is certainly gonna be a change in distribution, but I would call that a consolidation.
  - nordsieck 6y ago
    > we're entering the greatest wealth redistribution I can confidently say: this is nothing compared to the fall of the USSR or the aftermath of the Plague.
    - Retric 6y ago
      Plague was in a vastly poorer world. Fall of USSR was not a global event. So, it really depends on what you’re measuring, but I don’t think their clearly ahead when we don’t know the full details for COVID.
    - nabla9 6y ago
      I saw BBC article having title "How the Black Death made the rich richer" https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the-black-death-make-the-rich-richer https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the-black-... But what I remember from economic history and what the article actually says is mostly opposite. >Before the plague erupted, several centuries of population growth had produced a labour surplus, which was abruptly replaced with a labour shortage when many serfs and free peasants died. Historians have argued that this labour shortage allowed those peasants that survived the pandemic to demand better pay or to seek employment elsewhere. Despite government resistance, serfdom and the feudal system itself were ultimately eroded. This was the main effect of the plague. The wealth concentration BBC talks about affected much fewer people. This time the same is not going to happens because covid just increases demand for automation.
      - juniper_strong 6y ago
        This time the same is not going to happen because the plague killed ~50% of the population in Europe over a four year period, while covid won't kill even 1%, with most of the covid deaths being among retirees. If 50% of working age people died, both wages and automation would increase.
  - jb775 6y ago
    Why do you say we're entering the greatest wealth redistribution? Are you saying corona triggered something new or that it was already in progress?
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Some crony will buy them up at a discount.
- dhosek 6y ago
  The article gives at least one explanation of this—the museum was legally obligated to distribute the collection to other museums, non-profits and educational institutions.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Every museum has its own deaccession process. I would expect that small or partial liquidations would follow that process. More significant liquidations might have a different process due to the volume of pieces. I would expect most of these liquidations to be via public auction.
jcahill 6y ago
End of April reporting, for comparison: > All but about 5 to 7 percent of the world’s museums are currently shuttered because of the coronavirus pandemic, said Peter Keller, the general director of the International Council of Museums. According to the council’s research, one in 10 may not reopen, he added. More than 30 respondents to a 41-country survey, by the Network of European Museum Organizations, said they feared they would have to close permanently, among them the Museo de La Rioja and Museum of the Americas in Spain; Kornberg Castle in Austria, the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Hungary, and the National Historical Museum of Albania. The gravity of the situation varies by country, depending on how much museums rely on ticket sales and tourism, and how much government funding they receive. Museums in the United States which survive from earned income and philanthropy are more vulnerable than government-subsidized European institutions. The American Alliance of Museums reported to Congress in March that as many as 30 percent of museums could fail in the crisis, if there was no immediate intervention.
caseysoftware 6y ago
I've been working with this team for the last ~18 months: https://www.passitdown.com/ https://www.passitdown.com/ Coming from the Library of Congress' digitization project, I knew the importance and complexity of putting collections online so was drawn to them. Unfortunately, what was one venue for sharing collections became the only venue for sharing collections. I hope they - or other efforts like them - manage to at least document the pieces that are going to disappear into storage or private collections. :(
remote_phone 6y ago
I see a lot of doomsday predictions, but 4 months in, I’m barely seeing any signs of a protracted recession. Everyone seems to be doing okay, and when bars and businesses open up, they are jam packed. Am I the only one that is seeing a disparity between the speculations vs what I’m seeing around me? I truly believe we are in a crisis situation but why aren’t I seeing more signs of these doomsday predications?
- buttcoinslol 6y ago
  > I see a lot of doomsday predictions, but 4 months in, I’m barely seeing any signs of a protracted recession. Perhaps the trillions of dollars of stimulus money that has been distributed has something to do with it? Or maybe the generous unemployment benefits the federal government has passed out over the past four months to ensure people could pay their bills and purchase things to stimulate the economy? Without those things we'd be in a completely different scenario. Things may get worse yet, we're not exactly winning the fight against COVID-19 in the US.
  - techdevangelist 6y ago
    And those enhanced unemployment benefits expire next week, so far the Senate and White House are wanting them ‘means tested’, so it looks like they may fall off without renewal.
    - buttcoinslol 6y ago
      If they don't provide an extension, they lose the Senate and the White House. Trumpvilles, etc. I doubt they will gamble like that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- s5300 6y ago
  When was the last time you stepped into a region that was already impoverished before the pandemic?
matz1 6y ago
Just end the shutdown, its never a good strategy in the first place, its doing more harm than good.
- Jweb_Guru 6y ago
  As you may have noticed, many states have attempted to end the shutdown, and then quickly reinstated it when death tolls increased dramatically.
  - matz1 6y ago
    The case raise dramatically but not the death tolls.
    - Jweb_Guru 6y ago
      That's not actually true, but I've seen this talking point often enough that I know it's not really worth engaging in this discussion.
    - zaarn 6y ago
      Death tolls require some time to go up. If you lift lockdown, lots of people get infects. It takes a few days, maybe a week to show symptoms bad enough to go to a doctor for testing. This is the point in time when cases begin to go up. Imagine if you lifted the lockdown for a day and went back. One to two weeks after that, people will get more seriously ill, requiring hospitalization. Initially this can be treated easy at a (presumably) low-load hospital with no issue, the death toll is low. One more week and you have the majority of cases in the hospital, this is where most people will die. A month after you lifted the lockdown. Now imagine not locking down after that one day. After 1 month, you're at the peak of Day 1 infections, the next day the peak of day 2 infections etc. It compounds fast and can overwhelm a hospital. Once a hospital is unable to care for all patients properly, triage will be applied. People with good recovery chances will receive treatment, those who are risk groups will not. That's when your death toll will explode very suddenly.
      - 6y ago
WalterBright 6y ago
I'm puzzled by today's news on the vaccine. They were saying they would not make it available until it was proven "safe and effective". They said the vaccine may not be effective. But my understanding is the previous trials demonstrated it was safe. If it turns out to be ineffective, at least no harm is done. So why not make it available? If it works, and is even only partially effective, it would be a big help. I recall they said the vaccine would be considered "ineffective" if it worked something like less than 50% of the time. But wouldn't a 25% effective vaccine be a vast improvement over nothing?
- beowulfey 6y ago
  You may be forgetting the massive cost of ramping up vaccine production to immunize 7 billion people. Even at 25% effectivity, with so many other vaccines in the works it would be a huge waste to go with one that is barely effective when there’s another one that might work at 100%. Obviously the decision must be made eventually, but this is why they don’t rush it out.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    The news also reported that they were going to manufacture the vaccine before the trials were complete so there isn't a delay following approval. So it will be a sunk cost anyway. (The government is paying for it. Frankly, that's cheap as dirt compared to the economic damage from months more waiting for it to be produced.)
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      That sunk cost isn't as big as it would be if we actually administered it. There are lots of things we don't have to pay for - shipping, storing, and physically administering it. not to mention that if it doesn't work, some people will act as if it is - further spreading the risk of getting disease. And on top of it all, anyone against vaccines has a real world example to draw dire things from (and lie about, obviously, but still). Simply having a sunk cost isn't a good enough reason to actually administer it.
codeulike 6y ago
Museum Museum
kilroy123 6y ago
This is exactly why I created: https://randomdailyart.com https://randomdailyart.com To bring art to people who can't go see it in person. I haven't been able to visit any museums or art galleries in the past few months. I would really like to.
skee0083 6y ago
Nationalize them. Problem solved.
- cardamomo 6y ago
  Not exactly problem solved. The Smithsonian is already a federal institution and is financially strained as well. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/smithsonian-cuts-top-executives-pay-in-move-to-avoid-furloughs/2020/04/29/4805a886-8a21-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/smithso...
- thebooktocome 6y ago
  Doesn't work very well when every time a certain political party gains control, they begin destroying every nationalized institution.
codingdave 6y ago
The headline is misleading. This quote tells the actual story: "In a survey released Wednesday of 760 museum directors, 33% of them said there was either a "significant risk" of closing permanently by next fall or that they didn't know if their institutions would survive." It still shows a high level of uncertainty, but 1/3rd of museums are not saying they may be shutting down in 2020, as the headline would imply. They do have short runways, but note the discrepancy between 33% saying they aren't sure if they will make it a year, yet 87% saying they do not have a year of runway. 44% therefore have short runways yet do not doubt incoming funding. What we should do is help the funding return to the other 33% in the next 6-12 months.
- aqme28 6y ago
  I don't see how the headline is misleading. "One-third of U.S. Museums May Not Survive the Year" vs your version: 1/3 of museums are at "significant risk of closing permanently" within 12 months.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    “May not survive the year” can be read as either “may close before the end of this calendar year,” or “may close within 12 months.” Unless it’s January 1, those are quite different statements. English sucks sometimes. Edit: inserted the word “calendar” to clarify a little.
CalRobert 6y ago
I guess the silver lining here is that the "employees" are already generally unpaid.
- cardamomo 6y ago
  Museums do tend to have many volunteers, but I'm not sure how this is a silver lining. For one, larger museums employ a fair number of people, from educators to scientists to tradespeople to curators. In fact, many of them are already out of a job. Even museums with large endowments quickly started to lay off workers [0]. I would also argue that to volunteer in a museum is a rich cultural experience -- often a chance for people to engage with a discipline they are passionate about. They may not have been paid, but they are surely missing this connection with the people, places, and objects they love. [0]: https://hyperallergic.com/551571/moma-educator-contracts/ https://hyperallergic.com/551571/moma-educator-contracts/
- devonkim 6y ago
  The cruel exception is in military museums where all the military funded museums are paid somewhat decent wages but of course these wages pale in comparison to the military intelligence trainers getting paid $650k+ / year mostly tax-free due to being overseas. The NBLS statistics for museum workers is highly skewed for federally funded museums and those with long career tenures which makes it look like they're paid nearly as much as most other white collar workers but this doesn't mean there's actually jobs in the field. And this was all pre-COVID. OPM has been desperately trying to get people to retire earlier by offering huge lump sums but with healthcare the way it is, people are not retiring which puts a drag on a strapped public sector in headcount and requisitions, but the implication to me is that when museum persons are retiring nowadays in public sector they're being replaced with cheaper contractors or simply not being filled in at all. I'm familiar with entire libraries being shut down after a single librarian retired.
mrfusion 6y ago
These words of CS Lewis seem appropriate in our time of COVID as well. Here’s what he said in 1948 about the mental shift required by living with the threat of the atomic bomb: > “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  Of course now we have an understanding of how the plague works and if we could stop the growth of cancer as easily as we can COVID we might inadvertently cause the closure of some museums for that as well.
- throwaway5752 6y ago
  What a mediocre thought from a great mind. Generally we accept our own mortality even if we fear it, but we fear much more for our children. Most people are altruistic, and the fear of the end of the human species and most life on Earth (ie, fear of the atomic age) is much greater than that of dying of disease or accident. Since it's not worth a separate comment - every single museum in the US could be kept afloat during COVID by a single rich person. Unless they want confiscatorily high tax rates in the future they should step up now.
  - karlakush 6y ago
    So you're saying you're going to rob the rich unless they give you their money? How generous of you to give them a choice.
  - swsieber 6y ago
    > but we fear much more for our children People did back then too, so I'm not sure what's mediocre about it. We've had to live with situations outside of our hands for a long time. Our ability to alter the impact of adverse events isn't really driven by the magnitude of said events (e.g. family vs tribe vs city vs nation vs world). No matter the age, you just have to accept that you might encounter very unhappy events.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gen220 6y ago
If only the directors of museums could sell or take out loans on some vanishingly small percentage of their collections... When you don’t put your most valuable assets on your balance sheet (but do place the cost of acquiring them as expenses) [0], you can’t reasonably expect to be financially stable. Implicitly, these museums are saying that they’d rather lay off all their staff, than count their art towards their assets [1]. In my opinion, this has always been the real story with financial hardship in the museum world. They have been suffering financially for decades now. Every time membership declines or attendance stalls, they are doomed to teeter closer to the edge. [0]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262403 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262403 [1]: see, for example, this financial audit of the museum of Boston. “In accordance with current practice generally followed by museums, collections are generally not recorded as assets in the accompanying financial statements. Purchased additions to the collections are recorded as expenses at the time acquired.” ... “ Museum policy specifies that proceeds from the deaccessioning of an item may only be used for the conservation or acquisition of other collections items.” https://www.mos.org/sites/dev-elvis.mos.org/files/docs/about-us/mos_financial-statement_2016.pdf https://www.mos.org/sites/dev-elvis.mos.org/files/docs/about...
- bwestergard 6y ago
  If the art could be treated as an asset for accounting purposes, it would give museums and very strong incentive to collect pieces that command a high price. This would tend to weaken the internal standards of the community of artists and curators in favor of commercial standards. If you are skeptical of internal standards - if you think commercial standards should predominate - why have non-profit museums at all? Why donate to museums? Even if you're of the opinion that the existing internal norms of the art world are bogus - as I think many are - it does not follow that market norms should supplant internal norms. Internal norms can change through deliberation.
  - adolph 6y ago
    Why would art as asset incentivize collections focused on high prices? Wouldn't there be an advantage to seeking out things that they think would increase in value over time? Non-profit != charity. Many non-profit organizations are highly focused on the bottom line and given the high ticket price traveling exhibits I think that museums are not different in seeking the cultural relevance reflected by people's engagement, engagement that can be measured in how much they might pay for something.
pontifier 6y ago
And here I am working to open a new science museum with no funding whatsoever... I'm currently living in a tent outside Maybe I'm enough of a cheapskate to survive!
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  Where?
  - pontifier 6y ago
    I just bought a 220,000 sqft building in Pine Bluff Arkansas. The website is Serendipic.org I'm currently just funding everything myself.
Program_Install 6y ago
More fallout from the ineptness of our government I presume. Its forecasts like this that start to mount as we continue the downward trend. Truly a pandemic in every sense.
patja 6y ago
Museum directors all agree that anyone who sells museum holdings to meet operating expenses is blacklisted from future visiting collections. Let them sell some of their holdings and all will be well. Many of them are sitting on a vast inventory of items that are never seen by anyone.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Came here to say this. Malcolm Gladwell laid this out in a recent Podcast (although I didn't know about the blacklisting thing). http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/42-dragon-psychology-101 http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/42-dragon-psychology-...
- lumens 6y ago
  Malcolm Gladwell touches on this beautifully in the most recent season of Revisionist History: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dragon-psychology-101/id1119389968?i=1000478450374 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dragon-psychology-101/...
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  The purpose of a museum is to share knowledge, and selling objects into private collection is a direct violation of that mission. They might as well set the stuff on fire; the effect would be the same. Edit to add: it's a myth that objects not currently on public display are "never seen by anyone." Some get seen by the public when used or loaned out for temporary, traveling, or themed exhibits. The rest are generally made available to researchers with interest in that field.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Doesn’t that only specifically apply to art museums?
mcshicks 6y ago
My wife works at our local science museum. It's very tough for them, even in good times a lot of museums scramble for funding. They were able to reopen for a few days and then shut down again. They did PPE loans so all of the employees still have jobs for now, but its hard to know what will happen in the next few months, and will they be able to generate enough revenue. They do summer camp programs and have been switching those to virtual but I'm not sure how much revenue that will generate. Additionally they are kind of scrambling now to get more online content. In addition to donations, memberships and admission they have gotten some grant money in the past as well. Maybe when there is some clarity about when and how they can operate they might get some more donation money from local companies or philanthropists but I think the issue is how do the hang onto their staff. I think they were hoping the PPE loan could get them through but now its not so clear that was the best choice for them.
irrational 6y ago
What percentage of restaurants might not survive? What other types of establishments are likely to have a high percentage not surviving?
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Something like 20% of restaurants that were open in February are now permanently closed. It might be even a little more than that — I don’t have the data right in front of me. Extend that timeline to next fall, as in the article, and probably almost all the non-chain restaurants would be done for. Edit: it’s worse than I thought. Data from Yelp suggest about half of restaurants may be permanently closed. I have no idea how that breaks down into national and regional chains vs independently owned restaurants, however. See https://www.eater.com/2020/6/26/21304219/over-50-percent-of-yelp-restaurants-have-closed-permanently https://www.eater.com/2020/6/26/21304219/over-50-percent-of-...
pmiller2 6y ago
That reminds me: maybe I should renew some memberships early, or up my contributions.

175 points by mrfusion 6y ago

garmaine 6y ago

What happens to the collections...

trhway 6y ago
the same as with other assets - we're entering the greatest wealth redistribution (it would for example definitely beat the one triggered by 2008). The smaller and more vulnerable get distressed, and are going to be scooped up on the cheap by the big ones who have access to liquidity.
- simongr3dal 6y ago
  It is certainly gonna be a change in distribution, but I would call that a consolidation.
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > we're entering the greatest wealth redistribution I can confidently say: this is nothing compared to the fall of the USSR or the aftermath of the Plague.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Plague was in a vastly poorer world. Fall of USSR was not a global event. So, it really depends on what you’re measuring, but I don’t think their clearly ahead when we don’t know the full details for COVID.
  - nabla9 6y ago
    I saw BBC article having title "How the Black Death made the rich richer" https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the-black-death-make-the-rich-richer https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the-black-... But what I remember from economic history and what the article actually says is mostly opposite. >Before the plague erupted, several centuries of population growth had produced a labour surplus, which was abruptly replaced with a labour shortage when many serfs and free peasants died. Historians have argued that this labour shortage allowed those peasants that survived the pandemic to demand better pay or to seek employment elsewhere. Despite government resistance, serfdom and the feudal system itself were ultimately eroded. This was the main effect of the plague. The wealth concentration BBC talks about affected much fewer people. This time the same is not going to happens because covid just increases demand for automation.
    - juniper_strong 6y ago
      This time the same is not going to happen because the plague killed ~50% of the population in Europe over a four year period, while covid won't kill even 1%, with most of the covid deaths being among retirees. If 50% of working age people died, both wages and automation would increase.
- jb775 6y ago
  Why do you say we're entering the greatest wealth redistribution? Are you saying corona triggered something new or that it was already in progress?
Spooky23 6y ago
Some crony will buy them up at a discount.
dhosek 6y ago
The article gives at least one explanation of this—the museum was legally obligated to distribute the collection to other museums, non-profits and educational institutions.
pmiller2 6y ago
Every museum has its own deaccession process. I would expect that small or partial liquidations would follow that process. More significant liquidations might have a different process due to the volume of pieces. I would expect most of these liquidations to be via public auction.

jcahill 6y ago

End of April reporting, for comparison: > All but about 5 to 7 percent of the world’s museums are currently shuttered because of the coronavirus pandemic, said Peter Keller, the general director of the International Council of Museums. According to the council’s research, one in 10 may not reopen, he added. More than 30 respondents to a 41-country survey, by the Network of European Museum Organizations, said they feared they would have to close permanently, among them the Museo de La Rioja and Museum of the Americas in Spain; Kornberg Castle in Austria, the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Hungary, and the National Historical Museum of Albania. The gravity of the situation varies by country, depending on how much museums rely on ticket sales and tourism, and how much government funding they receive. Museums in the United States which survive from earned income and philanthropy are more vulnerable than government-subsidized European institutions. The American Alliance of Museums reported to Congress in March that as many as 30 percent of museums could fail in the crisis, if there was no immediate intervention.

caseysoftware 6y ago

I've been working with this team for the last ~18 months: https://www.passitdown.com/ https://www.passitdown.com/ Coming from the Library of Congress' digitization project, I knew the importance and complexity of putting collections online so was drawn to them. Unfortunately, what was one venue for sharing collections became the only venue for sharing collections. I hope they - or other efforts like them - manage to at least document the pieces that are going to disappear into storage or private collections. :(

remote_phone 6y ago

I see a lot of doomsday predictions, but 4 months in, I’m barely seeing any signs of a protracted recession. Everyone seems to be doing okay, and when bars and businesses open up, they are jam packed. Am I the only one that is seeing a disparity between the speculations vs what I’m seeing around me? I truly believe we are in a crisis situation but why aren’t I seeing more signs of these doomsday predications?

buttcoinslol 6y ago
> I see a lot of doomsday predictions, but 4 months in, I’m barely seeing any signs of a protracted recession. Perhaps the trillions of dollars of stimulus money that has been distributed has something to do with it? Or maybe the generous unemployment benefits the federal government has passed out over the past four months to ensure people could pay their bills and purchase things to stimulate the economy? Without those things we'd be in a completely different scenario. Things may get worse yet, we're not exactly winning the fight against COVID-19 in the US.
- techdevangelist 6y ago
  And those enhanced unemployment benefits expire next week, so far the Senate and White House are wanting them ‘means tested’, so it looks like they may fall off without renewal.
  - buttcoinslol 6y ago
    If they don't provide an extension, they lose the Senate and the White House. Trumpvilles, etc. I doubt they will gamble like that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
s5300 6y ago
When was the last time you stepped into a region that was already impoverished before the pandemic?

matz1 6y ago

Just end the shutdown, its never a good strategy in the first place, its doing more harm than good.

Jweb_Guru 6y ago
As you may have noticed, many states have attempted to end the shutdown, and then quickly reinstated it when death tolls increased dramatically.
- matz1 6y ago
  The case raise dramatically but not the death tolls.
  - Jweb_Guru 6y ago
    That's not actually true, but I've seen this talking point often enough that I know it's not really worth engaging in this discussion.
  - zaarn 6y ago
    Death tolls require some time to go up. If you lift lockdown, lots of people get infects. It takes a few days, maybe a week to show symptoms bad enough to go to a doctor for testing. This is the point in time when cases begin to go up. Imagine if you lifted the lockdown for a day and went back. One to two weeks after that, people will get more seriously ill, requiring hospitalization. Initially this can be treated easy at a (presumably) low-load hospital with no issue, the death toll is low. One more week and you have the majority of cases in the hospital, this is where most people will die. A month after you lifted the lockdown. Now imagine not locking down after that one day. After 1 month, you're at the peak of Day 1 infections, the next day the peak of day 2 infections etc. It compounds fast and can overwhelm a hospital. Once a hospital is unable to care for all patients properly, triage will be applied. People with good recovery chances will receive treatment, those who are risk groups will not. That's when your death toll will explode very suddenly.
    - 6y ago

WalterBright 6y ago

I'm puzzled by today's news on the vaccine. They were saying they would not make it available until it was proven "safe and effective". They said the vaccine may not be effective. But my understanding is the previous trials demonstrated it was safe. If it turns out to be ineffective, at least no harm is done. So why not make it available? If it works, and is even only partially effective, it would be a big help. I recall they said the vaccine would be considered "ineffective" if it worked something like less than 50% of the time. But wouldn't a 25% effective vaccine be a vast improvement over nothing?

beowulfey 6y ago
You may be forgetting the massive cost of ramping up vaccine production to immunize 7 billion people. Even at 25% effectivity, with so many other vaccines in the works it would be a huge waste to go with one that is barely effective when there’s another one that might work at 100%. Obviously the decision must be made eventually, but this is why they don’t rush it out.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  The news also reported that they were going to manufacture the vaccine before the trials were complete so there isn't a delay following approval. So it will be a sunk cost anyway. (The government is paying for it. Frankly, that's cheap as dirt compared to the economic damage from months more waiting for it to be produced.)
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    That sunk cost isn't as big as it would be if we actually administered it. There are lots of things we don't have to pay for - shipping, storing, and physically administering it. not to mention that if it doesn't work, some people will act as if it is - further spreading the risk of getting disease. And on top of it all, anyone against vaccines has a real world example to draw dire things from (and lie about, obviously, but still). Simply having a sunk cost isn't a good enough reason to actually administer it.

codeulike 6y ago

Museum Museum

kilroy123 6y ago

This is exactly why I created: https://randomdailyart.com https://randomdailyart.com To bring art to people who can't go see it in person. I haven't been able to visit any museums or art galleries in the past few months. I would really like to.

skee0083 6y ago

Nationalize them. Problem solved.

cardamomo 6y ago
Not exactly problem solved. The Smithsonian is already a federal institution and is financially strained as well. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/smithsonian-cuts-top-executives-pay-in-move-to-avoid-furloughs/2020/04/29/4805a886-8a21-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/smithso...
thebooktocome 6y ago
Doesn't work very well when every time a certain political party gains control, they begin destroying every nationalized institution.

codingdave 6y ago

The headline is misleading. This quote tells the actual story: "In a survey released Wednesday of 760 museum directors, 33% of them said there was either a "significant risk" of closing permanently by next fall or that they didn't know if their institutions would survive." It still shows a high level of uncertainty, but 1/3rd of museums are not saying they may be shutting down in 2020, as the headline would imply. They do have short runways, but note the discrepancy between 33% saying they aren't sure if they will make it a year, yet 87% saying they do not have a year of runway. 44% therefore have short runways yet do not doubt incoming funding. What we should do is help the funding return to the other 33% in the next 6-12 months.

aqme28 6y ago
I don't see how the headline is misleading. "One-third of U.S. Museums May Not Survive the Year" vs your version: 1/3 of museums are at "significant risk of closing permanently" within 12 months.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  “May not survive the year” can be read as either “may close before the end of this calendar year,” or “may close within 12 months.” Unless it’s January 1, those are quite different statements. English sucks sometimes. Edit: inserted the word “calendar” to clarify a little.

CalRobert 6y ago

I guess the silver lining here is that the "employees" are already generally unpaid.

cardamomo 6y ago
Museums do tend to have many volunteers, but I'm not sure how this is a silver lining. For one, larger museums employ a fair number of people, from educators to scientists to tradespeople to curators. In fact, many of them are already out of a job. Even museums with large endowments quickly started to lay off workers [0]. I would also argue that to volunteer in a museum is a rich cultural experience -- often a chance for people to engage with a discipline they are passionate about. They may not have been paid, but they are surely missing this connection with the people, places, and objects they love. [0]: https://hyperallergic.com/551571/moma-educator-contracts/ https://hyperallergic.com/551571/moma-educator-contracts/
devonkim 6y ago
The cruel exception is in military museums where all the military funded museums are paid somewhat decent wages but of course these wages pale in comparison to the military intelligence trainers getting paid $650k+ / year mostly tax-free due to being overseas. The NBLS statistics for museum workers is highly skewed for federally funded museums and those with long career tenures which makes it look like they're paid nearly as much as most other white collar workers but this doesn't mean there's actually jobs in the field. And this was all pre-COVID. OPM has been desperately trying to get people to retire earlier by offering huge lump sums but with healthcare the way it is, people are not retiring which puts a drag on a strapped public sector in headcount and requisitions, but the implication to me is that when museum persons are retiring nowadays in public sector they're being replaced with cheaper contractors or simply not being filled in at all. I'm familiar with entire libraries being shut down after a single librarian retired.

mrfusion 6y ago

These words of CS Lewis seem appropriate in our time of COVID as well. Here’s what he said in 1948 about the mental shift required by living with the threat of the atomic bomb: > “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
Of course now we have an understanding of how the plague works and if we could stop the growth of cancer as easily as we can COVID we might inadvertently cause the closure of some museums for that as well.
throwaway5752 6y ago
What a mediocre thought from a great mind. Generally we accept our own mortality even if we fear it, but we fear much more for our children. Most people are altruistic, and the fear of the end of the human species and most life on Earth (ie, fear of the atomic age) is much greater than that of dying of disease or accident. Since it's not worth a separate comment - every single museum in the US could be kept afloat during COVID by a single rich person. Unless they want confiscatorily high tax rates in the future they should step up now.
- karlakush 6y ago
  So you're saying you're going to rob the rich unless they give you their money? How generous of you to give them a choice.
- swsieber 6y ago
  > but we fear much more for our children People did back then too, so I'm not sure what's mediocre about it. We've had to live with situations outside of our hands for a long time. Our ability to alter the impact of adverse events isn't really driven by the magnitude of said events (e.g. family vs tribe vs city vs nation vs world). No matter the age, you just have to accept that you might encounter very unhappy events.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gen220 6y ago

If only the directors of museums could sell or take out loans on some vanishingly small percentage of their collections... When you don’t put your most valuable assets on your balance sheet (but do place the cost of acquiring them as expenses) [0], you can’t reasonably expect to be financially stable. Implicitly, these museums are saying that they’d rather lay off all their staff, than count their art towards their assets [1]. In my opinion, this has always been the real story with financial hardship in the museum world. They have been suffering financially for decades now. Every time membership declines or attendance stalls, they are doomed to teeter closer to the edge. [0]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262403 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262403 [1]: see, for example, this financial audit of the museum of Boston. “In accordance with current practice generally followed by museums, collections are generally not recorded as assets in the accompanying financial statements. Purchased additions to the collections are recorded as expenses at the time acquired.” ... “ Museum policy specifies that proceeds from the deaccessioning of an item may only be used for the conservation or acquisition of other collections items.” https://www.mos.org/sites/dev-elvis.mos.org/files/docs/about-us/mos_financial-statement_2016.pdf https://www.mos.org/sites/dev-elvis.mos.org/files/docs/about...

bwestergard 6y ago
If the art could be treated as an asset for accounting purposes, it would give museums and very strong incentive to collect pieces that command a high price. This would tend to weaken the internal standards of the community of artists and curators in favor of commercial standards. If you are skeptical of internal standards - if you think commercial standards should predominate - why have non-profit museums at all? Why donate to museums? Even if you're of the opinion that the existing internal norms of the art world are bogus - as I think many are - it does not follow that market norms should supplant internal norms. Internal norms can change through deliberation.
- adolph 6y ago
  Why would art as asset incentivize collections focused on high prices? Wouldn't there be an advantage to seeking out things that they think would increase in value over time? Non-profit != charity. Many non-profit organizations are highly focused on the bottom line and given the high ticket price traveling exhibits I think that museums are not different in seeking the cultural relevance reflected by people's engagement, engagement that can be measured in how much they might pay for something.

pontifier 6y ago

And here I am working to open a new science museum with no funding whatsoever... I'm currently living in a tent outside Maybe I'm enough of a cheapskate to survive!

coronadisaster 6y ago
Where?
- pontifier 6y ago
  I just bought a 220,000 sqft building in Pine Bluff Arkansas. The website is Serendipic.org I'm currently just funding everything myself.

Program_Install 6y ago

More fallout from the ineptness of our government I presume. Its forecasts like this that start to mount as we continue the downward trend. Truly a pandemic in every sense.

patja 6y ago

Museum directors all agree that anyone who sells museum holdings to meet operating expenses is blacklisted from future visiting collections. Let them sell some of their holdings and all will be well. Many of them are sitting on a vast inventory of items that are never seen by anyone.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Came here to say this. Malcolm Gladwell laid this out in a recent Podcast (although I didn't know about the blacklisting thing). http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/42-dragon-psychology-101 http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/42-dragon-psychology-...
lumens 6y ago
Malcolm Gladwell touches on this beautifully in the most recent season of Revisionist History: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dragon-psychology-101/id1119389968?i=1000478450374 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dragon-psychology-101/...
snowwrestler 6y ago
The purpose of a museum is to share knowledge, and selling objects into private collection is a direct violation of that mission. They might as well set the stuff on fire; the effect would be the same. Edit to add: it's a myth that objects not currently on public display are "never seen by anyone." Some get seen by the public when used or loaned out for temporary, traveling, or themed exhibits. The rest are generally made available to researchers with interest in that field.
pmiller2 6y ago
Doesn’t that only specifically apply to art museums?

mcshicks 6y ago

My wife works at our local science museum. It's very tough for them, even in good times a lot of museums scramble for funding. They were able to reopen for a few days and then shut down again. They did PPE loans so all of the employees still have jobs for now, but its hard to know what will happen in the next few months, and will they be able to generate enough revenue. They do summer camp programs and have been switching those to virtual but I'm not sure how much revenue that will generate. Additionally they are kind of scrambling now to get more online content. In addition to donations, memberships and admission they have gotten some grant money in the past as well. Maybe when there is some clarity about when and how they can operate they might get some more donation money from local companies or philanthropists but I think the issue is how do the hang onto their staff. I think they were hoping the PPE loan could get them through but now its not so clear that was the best choice for them.

irrational 6y ago

What percentage of restaurants might not survive? What other types of establishments are likely to have a high percentage not surviving?

pmiller2 6y ago
Something like 20% of restaurants that were open in February are now permanently closed. It might be even a little more than that — I don’t have the data right in front of me. Extend that timeline to next fall, as in the article, and probably almost all the non-chain restaurants would be done for. Edit: it’s worse than I thought. Data from Yelp suggest about half of restaurants may be permanently closed. I have no idea how that breaks down into national and regional chains vs independently owned restaurants, however. See https://www.eater.com/2020/6/26/21304219/over-50-percent-of-yelp-restaurants-have-closed-permanently https://www.eater.com/2020/6/26/21304219/over-50-percent-of-...

pmiller2 6y ago

That reminds me: maybe I should renew some memberships early, or up my contributions.