Culture Chronicle
Richest cultural groups ID'd
Who's up, who's down in first-ever ranking of NYC's institutions
Crain's New York Business - July 19, 2010
By Miriam Kreinin Souccar
It comes as no surprise that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest cultural institution in the city. But who would have thought that the city's three library systems--the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library--would all rank in the top 10 when measured by budget size, beating major landmarks like Carnegie Hall.
The list--which ranks the top 100 cultural groups and is sponsored by Crain's New York Business and compiled by the Alliance for the Arts--is believed to be the first such snapshot of the city's nonprofit cultural institutions. Together, the nonprofits have an annual economic impact of $5.8 billion, according to the alliance. The organizations are ranked by the size of their operating expenses culled from the most recently available regulatory filings.
The ranking leads with the Metropolitan Museum, with annual expenses of more than $309 million. The budgets of the others are much smaller. Only nine of the 100 have budgets of $100 million or more. The full list is at CrainsNew York.com.
The great majority of groups operate with budgets under $50 million, and nearly 70% subsist on less than $20 million a year. The smallest group to make the cut was ArtsConnection, a $3.7 million organization that fosters arts education in the public schools.
"I'm hoping the list will make people think about how much these arts groups do on so little," says Randall Bourscheidt, president of Alliance for the Arts.
The budgets on the list were in place before the recession, in which nearly every arts institution was forced to cut expenses. But even if the dollar amounts are smaller now, the ranking is likely to be the same, since most groups received similar percentage cuts in funding. For the full article, click here
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