Museum Funding-Fundraising

The Asheville Art Museum seems to have a watchdog on its tail, probably in a good way — in fact, in a way such that it makes me wonder if, say, the Corcoran Gallery of Art might have survived as it was had it had someone similarly watching its every move.

In Asheville, the watchdog is a man named Ken Michalove, the former mayor and city manager.  He says the museum “is headed for bankruptcy unless it ramps up its own fundraising, sticks to its original goals and stops trying to adjust its game plan and financial reports so as to qualify for city and county money,” according to a recent article in the Asheville Tribune. The museum needs to raise $24 million, a goal originally set in 1996.

Michalove’s other main points:

• Investment income has plummeted: “The art museum lists its 2013 investment income as $789,357, reduced by $768,701 from the previous year. Of this difference, Michalove says, $775,000 was listed on the 2012 Form 990 as “Gross amount of sales other than inventory.” Michalove says he has repeatedly asked what “sales” made up that figure but has received no response from the art museum. Without its inclusion in the grand total, the museum’s investment income would only come to $34,357.
• “In January, 2014, museum executive director Pam Myers made a presentation to the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority (TDA) in order to obtain yet another extension to a $1.5 million grant agreement on which the museum had already defaulted twice. Myers indicated the museum’s number of non-student visitors had more than doubled, from 21,750 to 49,297. That number, divided into the museum’s stated admissions revenues of $71,224 yield an average ticket price of a dollar and forty-four cents, rather than the museum’s $8.00 regular admissions fee. “What’s going on with these numbers?” Michalove asked.
• “Michalove says the museum’s projected income under its present investment strategy will fall short of its goal by $228,000 by the end of fiscal year 2017. In that case, and without a “major influx of cash” from somewhere else, Michalove says, the art museum will be staring down the barrel of bankruptcy; hence his conclusion that the museum must indeed raise “at least” the full $24 million it originally stated as its campaign goal.”

There’s more in the story.

If Michalove’s analysis is correct, there are even more questions than are explicitly asked in the article. For example, is the museum invading its endowment, or why else would investment income drop so much in an up market? And those other “gross sales” certainly do require an explanation — sales of what?

If nothing else, Michalove is showing museum management and trustees that the museum has to be responsible and responsive.

UPDATE: For another view, that from the museum, which says its finances are fine, go here: Tourism board backs Asheville Art Museum renovation

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Asheville Art Museum 

Judge rules that mergers can proceed, a headline about the Corcoran Gallery of Art cy pres case would say. But the decision, D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Okun made, he said, was “painful.”

That’s sort of how I have felt from the beginning: it’s a bad situation and it’s pretty hard to dream up a way to save the Corcoran as it was. The Corcoran’s troubles and management/governance, or lack thereof, had simply got too bad, and the Corcoran was damaged goods. I never believed in the plan of Wayne Reynolds to save it; in the long run, I feared, he would have become a black knight, not a white one.

Okun’s order “effectively dissolves the Corcoran as an independent entity,” the Washington Business Journal quoted him as saying. He added:

This court would find it even more painful to deny the relief requested and allow the Corcoran to face its likely demise — the likely dissolution of the college, the closing of the gallery and the dispersal of the gallery’s entire collection.

You can read his entire Corcoran Order at that hotlink. A few more excerpts, via WBJ:

The issue before the court is not whether the Corcoran could have been managed more efficiently over the past decade, but whether it currently is impracticable for the Trustees to carry out the existing deed of trust….

Undoubtedly, Mr. Corcoran would not be pleased by this turn of events. It seems likely, however, that he would be pleased to see that the college will be preserved through its partnership with the very university to which he donated both property and his company’s archives … and that the gallery will be preserved through its partnership with one of the country’s pre-eminent art institutions.

Though it is the most practical solution, the Corcoran’s board and management still have a lot of proving to do. Their sometimes questionable behavior during this saga — including the reneging last week on a job this September for adjunct professor Jayme McLellan, a co-founder of the Save the Corcoran group that opposed this plan vocally and in court — will have to be rectified, with, I hope, some magnanimous gestures.

Meanwhile, Save the Corcoran’s attorney was gracious in defeat. He said in a statement:

While this is not our vision for the Corcoran, we received a full and fair trial and are grateful that we were given the opportunity to defend the legacy of one of the oldest and most beloved museums in the nation,” he said. “We wish GW and the National Gallery all the best as the new stewards of Mr. Corcoran’s gifts.

Save the Corcoran will  not appeal. It’s over. The Corcoran will now merge with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. Details are here, from the NGA.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Associated Press

Just in: D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Okun has granted standing, aka petition to intervene, to nine of the 19 people who, as part of Save the Corcoran, asked to be part of the case to stop the mergers put forward by the museum’s trustees.

The 9 include current students, staff and faculty. The judge reportedly told the attorney representing the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery that he expects further justification of the mergers with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University as the way forward for the gallery and the school.

The next hearings have been scheduled for next Monday, from 2 to 4:45 pm, plus Tuesday and Wednesday, from 10 am to 4:45 pm and Thursday, 10 am to 3 pm. Here’s the Washington Post article that ran on Saturday explaining more background.