One-third of City Museums Have No Clear Plans to Reopen This Fall
Despite Governor Cuomo’s order permitting museums to reopen at 25% capacity in August, not all of New York City’s museums have been taking advantage of the opportunity.
Of the 73 museums in New York City identified by NYCGO.com, the city’s tourism guide, 25 are closed until further notice or plan to reopen in 2021. With smaller spaces and little money to reorganize spaces for social distancing, these museums have put off reopening. Now they are relying on donations, layoffs, and revenue from online content to avoid permanent closure.
“I won’t lie. We have some holes,” says Regina Bain, Executive Director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens, referring to the museum’s finances. Bain says the space is small and not well ventilated. Before the pandemic, the museum would host tours of 10–12 people, charging $12 per head. Now Bain says it doesn’t make sense financially or logistically to do a tour with only two people. She also worries that increasing the ventilation of outside air would risk damaging some of the historic objects in the house.
990s, the public tax forms filed by nonprofits, between 2014 and 2018 show that the Louis Armstrong House Museum would normally take in about $100,000 a year from admission, tours, and in-person events, while roughly 80% of its revenue came from outside funding. Bain says the museum’s revenue is spent on both upkeep of the historic house, construction of a new building, the Armstrong Center, as well as paying the staff’s salaries. Without admissions revenue, she says, “there’s definitely a gap.” One of the museum’s nine staff members has been furloughed, according to Bain.
A study released by the American Alliance of Museums in July warned that one-third of museums in the US would not survive the Coronavirus pandemic. Brendan Ciecko, CEO & Founder of museum consultancy Cuseum, says smaller museums and historical houses will be most vulnerable to permanent closure. 32% of museums in the study said in June they had four months or less operating reserves remaining. An additional 24% said they had five to six months.
The National Museum of Mathematics also remains shuttered. CEO and Executive Director Cindy Lawrence says most exhibits at the museum require physically touching objects, something still prohibited under the state law. According to Lawrence, the museum’s revenue has declined 80% between March and August, compared to the same period last year.
Lawrence says the museum has relied on donations, charged fees for virtual content, and laid off a few of its part-time staff, although she declined to give a specific number. 990 filings show that, between 2014 and 2018, a third of the museum’s revenue came from admissions revenue and program fees, while roughly two-thirds came from donations. In the fiscal year ending in 2018, the museum took in $2.1 million from in-person admissions, tours, and events. Since March 13, it has made nothing in-person admission, according to Lawrence.
The Museum at Eldridge Street has put off reopening because they’re in figuring out the best way to guide visitors through the space, according to Chelsea Dowell, Director of Public Engagement. She says the museum has relied on the support of donors during the pandemic, whose contributions typically make up 90% of the museum’s yearly revenue, according to 990 filings between 2014 and 2018. Dowell also says the museum has furloughed two of its twelve staff members.
Although these museums face an uncertain future, Bain says the longevity of the Louis Armstrong House Museum is vital to the culture of the area. She says, “If we don’t survive, that legacy goes away in Queens, and that can’t happen.”
