Cleveland Museum Of Art Director On Staff Cuts and the Future

The cultural toll of COVID-19 continues to reverberate through Northeast Ohio. Facing a multi-million dollar shortfall, Cleveland Museum of Art director William Griswold announced staff reductions this week. Out of approximately 500 employees, about 150 part-timers are being furloughed and about 10 union members will be temporarily laid off. With the building closed, Griswold said there will be no money coming in for the fourth quarter of the museum’s fiscal year, which ends June 30.

“No revenue from parking or dining or the store,” he said. “No revenue from ticketed exhibitions or programs.”

Special events like the annual Solstice celebration in June or the highly-touted “Picasso and Paper” exhibition for the summer have been canceled or delayed. And donors could be skittish to contribute, given the current turmoil in the financial markets.

Cleveland Museum of Art director William Griswold at CMA's Fall 2019 preview [Julie Hahn / Cleveland Museum of Art]

“And so, we are anticipating a revenue shortfall for the fourth quarter of the year alone in excess of 5 million dollars,” he said.

In order to cut expenses, the museum has furloughed all part-time staff, including security guards and visitor associates who were idled because of the closure. Full-time, non-union staff are getting a five-hour-per-week pay cut, and some unionized workers have been laid off. In addition, the work of contractors is suspended and a general hiring freeze is in place.

“Our plan is to restore everyone to the pay that they had, as soon as we are open again,” he said. “Of course, we don't know exactly when that will be.”

One financial backstop for CMA is a sizable endowment fund, built over the course of a century. Griswold said the endowment topped $800 million this past January, but it has been battered in recent days due to world-wide financial uncertainty. The museum draws the interest from the endowment to help with general operations and to buy art. Griswold emphasized that it’s not a rainy day fund or a checking account.

“This is not a pot of money that we can simply draw down from. It is there for the long term,” he said. “If we had no endowment, we would be unable to offer free general admission and our operations over time would be greatly, greatly reduced.”

For some large cultural organizations, like the art museum and the Cleveland Orchestra, the pandemic has also impacted the ability to stage special concerts or exhibitions. The orchestra had spent years organizing a May festival examining art and censorship, only to cancel it earlier this week. CMA’s Picasso exhibition involved coordinating museum schedules in Paris and London. The show received rave reviews from the British press, but now won’t come to Cleveland anytime soon.

“And I would imagine this will have a significant domino effect over the next couple of years on our exhibition schedule,” Griswold said, adding that CMA’s global partners are being very accommodating about rescheduling.

He said arts organizations across the country are examining the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package for its potential to ease some financial burdens - especially for those without large endowments.

“There are some provisions in the package for loans to businesses to support payroll, for example,” he said. “I'm very hopeful that this may be a lifeline for some organizations, particularly those that are conceivably on the verge of collapse. We are not in that situation.”

For now, Griswold’s focus is on reopening and getting his team back together, from the curators to the visitor associates to the guards and all the other people that keep the museum running. But, when the reopening happens and what it will look like is hard to say right now.

“For example, one of the major museums in China, the Shanghai Museum, has reopened, but is permitting only a trickle of visitors on a daily basis in order to sustain social distancing practices,” he said. “So, we've got a lot to think about and we're working through it in real time.”

For the time being, Griswold said the museum is maintaining a skeleton crew to safeguard the collection and maintain the building, while the rest of the staff works from home. And he said he’s starting to feel a little bit more optimistic about the future.

“We're all in this together, and I think that's an important point and a kind of a guiding principle for us as we navigate this crisis,” he said. “We're in it together as a staff. We're in it together as a community, we’re together as a field, we're together globally. We're all in the same boat and everyone has the same shared goal, which is to return to normalcy once we get through it.”