The Seattle Art Museum cut 17 staff members earlier this year,
from a staff of 240. Every department is affected, although no curators
were eliminated. SAM has also cut its hours. Beginning in September, it
will be closed Tuesdays as well as Mondays. Exhibitions have been
extended, which means fewer new shows on the schedule.
Maybe that’s a good thing. The installation crew is now down to the size it was before the 2007 expansion, which tripled exhibition space. That’s not counting installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park, which also opened in 2007.
Attendance remains strong, over projections in 2009.
The
museum’s fiscal year 2009 budget is $27 million. The 2010 budget is projected to be
$23,000 $23 million. SAM does not foresee a deficit this year. Given the economy,
SAM would be in fine shape were it not for the Washington Mutual
debacle.
Update: SAM corrected one of the figures it originally gave me. The museum ultimately cut its 2009 budget to $25 million.
SAM leased space to WaMu, generating $5.9 million for
the museum annually. After WaMu failed and Chase Bank took it over,
Chase gave SAM $10 million spread out over 5 years, although it wasn’t
contractually obligated to pay anything at all.
That means on
top of the financial hardships facing every museum in the country, SAM
has its own additional income hole to fill. That hole is not related to
the annual budget, says Nicole Griffin, museum spokeswoman. All the money from the lease went to pay
off its debt
from the expansion, which is $59 million. That money still has to be paid and has to come from somewhere.
SAM financed its 2007 expansion by renting out 240,000 square feet of
office space to WaMu. SAM and WaMu shared the block bounded by First
and Second avenues and Union and University streets downtown. Each
occupied and owned a separate building designed by different architects
(NBBJ for the defunct WaMu; Brad Cloepfil for SAM, an expansion on
Robert Venturi’s original building).
WaMu owned the top four floors and rented eight floors in Cloepfil’s
16-floor-high museum expansion, which is next door to WaMu’s own tower.
SAM occupies four floors in its new building. Eventually, it will
occupy 12 floors, which, including Venturi’s original 150,00 square
feet, will add up to 450,000 square feet. SAM has hired Matthew Griffin, a developer with the Pine Street Group,
to find a new tenant.
So far, no takers.
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