Museums Fear Lean Days Ahead

Since it opened last month at the Museum of Modern Art, “Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night” has been attracting several thousand people each day to the second-floor galleries. Visitors can be seen waiting in line for tables at all three of the museum’s restaurants, and MoMA’s shops are reporting a 5 percent increase in sales over a year ago.

But in executive offices several floors above the bustle, officials are wondering how long the good times will last.

“We know there’s a storm at sea and we know it’s going to hit land and it could get ugly,” said Glenn D. Lowry, the museum’s director. “But we don’t know how hard it will be or when it’s coming. So we are trying to make educated guesses.”

As a result, the museum instituted a temporary hiring freeze last week as well as a 10 percent cut in its general operating budget that will be revisited in December.

Across the country directors like Mr. Lowry are bracing for the effects of an economic crisis that could change everything from the size and kinds of exhibitions a museum presents to the acquisitions it could afford and the merchandise it should offer in its shops.

Already the financial-market meltdown has diminished the endowment funds that cover museums’ day-to-day operating expenses. Lehman Brothers, for years a crucial sponsor for museums across the country, is no more. Surviving banking institutions and corporations that also have been the bedrock of exhibition support are likely to give far less or cut off gifts altogether.

Even the most beneficent of museum trustees are feeling the pinch. So are paying members, like the 115,000 signed up by MoMA who fork out anywhere from $50 (student membership) to $60,000 for their privileges. Directors and curators are thus in a holding pattern, waiting to see if year-end gifts materialize or membership revenues take a tumble.

“Caution is the word of the moment,” Mr. Lowry said.

At the Brooklyn Museum, which opened a critically praised retrospective of the British artists Gilbert and George two weeks ago, officials are already fretting about a midcareer retrospective next June devoted to the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare. So far no money has been raised for the show, said the museum’s director, Arnold L. Lehman.

“There is no safety net,” he added. “We’re being squeezed at every end.”

Yet slowly and methodically, museums have been mapping out strategies for dealing with the potential shortfall.

Although few anticipated the global shock waves that accompanied the market slide, internal planners had long been aware that a downturn was in the making. Even as far back as late-2001, when terrorism insurance became a major issue, museums predicted a drop in loans and urged curators to focus on inventive shows drawing from their permanent collections.

Evidence that museums have been more creative with their holdings ranges from MoMA’s van Gogh exhibition, which uses the museum’s “Starry Night” as its centerpiece, to “Kirchner and the Berlin Street,” which revolves around two seminal paintings owned by the museum, although both shows include loans from the United States and abroad. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which for years has been presenting shows based on its holdings, will open “Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography” on Nov. 4, featuring 30 works from its holdings.

Many predict that the impact of the slowdown will become far clearer at the end of the year, by which time most individuals will have made their annual tax-deductible donations. Museum officials will also be holding their breath to see whether loyal donors continue to give art or will be forced to sell part of their collections to raise capital for themselves.

“There is bound to be belt-tightening across the board,” said Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “I imagine a lot of donors who are leveraged will probably be postponing decisions until the first of the year. A lot of people are waiting to see what happens, which means things will be put on hold.”

Mr. Govan said that he also wondered how the economic crisis would affect memberships, a crucial revenue stream for all museums. “We’re competing with buying gas and going out to dinner,” he said.

The Los Angeles museum’s memberships, which bring in about $8 million a year, range from $25 at the student level to $50,000 for members of the Director’s Circle (a status that affords what the museum terms “intimate dinners with artists and the director”).

In New York, meanwhile, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office has asked the department of cultural affairs, which decides how much city money each museum receives, along with other city agencies, to reduce its spending by 2.5 percent in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and make an additional 5 percent cut in the next one.

Since most of the museums’ big loan shows are planned years ahead, development offices are scrambling to arrange financing for exhibitions that won’t open for several years. While few officials will discuss the matter for attribution, most admit that the effort is more difficult than ever.

Still, not all supporters are cutting back. So far the discount retailer Target, for instance, continues to finance 1,500 free days a year at more than 70 museums across the country even though it reported that its sales are down 3 percent from this time last year.

Supporters like U.B.S. and Bank of America said last week that they were still planning support for museums next year, although they declined to provide figures. Many point out that cultural philanthropy is not only a way of building good public relations with arts audiences but also a way to telegraph that they are still in business and confident.

At Bank of America, which announced this month that it wanted to raise $10 billion in additional capital because of weaker-than-expected earnings, officials said they had no plans to stop supporting cultural institutions. “In times like these it’s especially important,” said Rena M. DeSisto, Bank of America’s arts and culture executive.

Customer surveys indicate that clients appreciate the company’s support of the arts, she said, so “it’s a marketing decision.”

Although she declined to say how much the bank has invested in the arts over the last few years or intended to spend in 2009, Ms. DeSisto said the bank had helped to finance “Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters From the Cleveland Museum of Art,” which opened last week at the Detroit Institute of Arts; “Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples,” which opened on Sunday at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and goes to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in May; and “Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety and Myth,” which arrives Feb. 14 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

U.B.S., which is perhaps best known in the art world for sponsoring the Art Basel fair in Switzerland and its counterpart Art Basel Miami Beach, said it planned to continue supporting such contemporary-art projects. “But this year we have to be more diligent with every dollar spent, ” said Peter Dillon, head of sponsorship at U.B.S. in America. “And get more for our money.”

Typically corporate museum members, who spend $25,000 to $40,000 for their subscriptions, gain free admission for their employees and, at the higher end of largess, use of the museum for parties. Now as these corporations go to the bargaining table, they are asking for more — advertising on bus shelters and street banners, in magazines and online — in exchange for less.

From the museums’ side, gift shops that in good times offered expensive jewelry, china or furniture are beginning to lower their price points, several directors said.

But even in the face of leaner times, some directors are trying to find an upside.

“Making the best of our permanent collections is no bad thing,” said William M. Griswold, director of the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan.

And if art prices start to nosedive, said Mr. Govan in Los Angeles, “maybe we’ll finally be able to afford to buy things.”

Mr. Govan and others said that in tough times, museums that viewed one another as competitors might find themselves working better together.

And some directors argue that museums are not simply a great escape, but good value compared with a movie that can cost about $12 and end in two hours. At a museum, many said, visitors can spend an entire day and often take in a movie, too.

Then there’s the more cosmic view. “Art doesn’t lose its emotional or artistic value,” Mr. Govan said. “That doesn’t change no matter what the economy.”