CUTS FOR CLEVELAND MUSEUM; EXPANSION FOR SAVANNAH COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART
The Cleveland Museum of Art, battered by a bad economy and a 30 percent drop in the value of its endowment since June, is cutting salaries and eliminating other expenses to keep its budget in line, reports the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. According to the Plain-Dealer‘s art critic, Steven Litt, the cuts, though sharp, aren’t as pronounced as at many other art museums across the country, where reductions are deeper and layoffs are common.
“We and other cultural institutions have found ourselves in an extraordinarily difficult situation,” museum director Timothy Rub said on Monday. “We are facing challenges we haven’t really experienced at any point in the recent past.” The Cleveland museum isn’t cutting jobs for now. And it plans to push ahead with a $350 million expansion and renovation. Completion of the project, though, could slip from 2012 to 2013.
By cutting salaries, benefits, travel, hospitality, and service contracts, the museum hopes to trim its $34.9 million budget for 2010 by $2.2 million, a 6 percent reduction. Rub, who earns $400,000, will take a 15 percent pay cut, as will other staff members earning above $300,000. Salaries will be cut 10 percent for employees earning more than $200,000, 5 percent for those earning more than $100,000, and 2.5 percent for those earning above $75,000.
In more encouraging news, the Savannah College of Art and Design is planning a thirty-million-dollar expansion of its museum of art, according to the Associated Press. The school expects to break ground on the ninety-thousand-square-foot expansion by this fall. It will transform a shell of an old railroad depot into a new exhibit center that will house a collection of African-American art valued at ten million dollars.
Walter Evans, a physician who donated the collection, said the depot is in the heart of what once had been a thriving black commercial district. The college has launched a fund-raising campaign for construction, and city leaders say they are excited about the project.
