BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ANNOUNCES LAYOFFS
Reeling from the recession, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts laid off thirty-three workers on Thursday, about 4 percent of its staff, and said it will freeze salaries in next year’s budget, reports the Boston Globe. The cuts are meant to contain costs as the museum readies for a massive building project set to be completed in 2010. In addition to eliminating the jobs, the MFA will no longer fill twenty-one vacant positions. After the reductions, the MFA will employ 756 workers, 577 of them full-time. Along with the frozen salaries, museum director Malcolm Rogers, his four deputy directors, and the dean of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts have taken voluntary pay cuts. In addition, the MFA said it is working to reduce costs by cutting back on staff travel, reducing printed newsletters, and considering ways to spend less on exhibitions.
Together, the cuts will save $6 million in the 2010 fiscal year, the museum said. The MFA budget for the museum’s most recent fiscal year, 2008, was $54.9 million. The museum did not disclose savings for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. “We’ve known for several months that we had to look at cost cutting in all possible ways, but we thought very seriously about taking our time,” said Rogers. “One of the critical things is not to overreact in difficult circumstances.”
The MFA’s endowment has declined about 30 percent since June, to about $359 million. Rogers said the MFA has been particularly hard hit in its retail shop and fund-raising. Twenty of the thirty-three laid-off workers came from those two departments. Retail revenue dropped from $7.6 million in fiscal year 2007 to $7.36 million in 2008. No figures were available for the current fiscal year, but the numbers are expected to fall. Membership at the MFA is also down, from seventy-six thousand in 2008 to its current seventy thousand. Still, the museum is on track to open a dramatic expansion next year. “This allows the museum to remain stable through the rest of this year and the rest of next year,” said Rogers.
