Culture Chronicle

Hit by the Downturn, Museums Seek Bailouts
The Wall Street Journal - May 20, 2010
By Shelly Banjo

Several Forge Partnerships With Universities, Even Hand Over Artwork, to Keep Doors Open Amid Deficits

The Magnes Museum is giving away its entire collection of prized Jewish art, including a 19th-century ketubah, or marriage contract, from one of India's oldest Jewish communities. The Berkeley, Calif., museum doesn't have enough money to maintain the 10,000-piece collection, says Alla Efimova, executive director of the Magnes, and so it will turn the trove over to an unlikely rescuer: the University of California-Berkeley, part of California's public university system, which has experienced its own budget shortfall of $1 billion this past year. But the museum says UC-Berkeley is in a better financial position to oversee the collection.

"There was just not enough money to go around and we needed to do something to ensure the institution would continue," Ms. Efimova says.

Tottering under years of deficits, accumulated debt and declining donations, several of the country's small and medium-size museums have been turning to the art-world equivalent of a bailout. They are partnering with a university or other academic institution, in some cases handing over artworks and changing locations, in a last-ditch effort to keep their doors open and their collections intact and available to the public. For the full article, click here