
One-Third of U.S. Museums May Not Survive the Year, Survey Finds - mrfusion
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/22/894049653/one-third-of-u-s-museums-may-not-survive-the-year-survey-finds
======
mrfusion
These words of CS Lewis seem appropriate in our time of COVID as well. Here’s
what he said in 1948 about the mental shift required by living with the threat
of the atomic bomb:

> “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you
> would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London
> almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders
> from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you
> are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of
> paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor
> accidents.”

~~~
throwaway5752
What a mediocre thought from a great mind. Generally we accept our own
mortality even if we fear it, but we fear much more for our children. Most
people are altruistic, and the fear of the end of the human species and most
life on Earth (ie, fear of the atomic age) is much greater than that of dying
of disease or accident.

Since it's not worth a separate comment - every single museum in the US could
be kept afloat during COVID by a single rich person. Unless they want
confiscatorily high tax rates in the future they should step up now.

~~~
swsieber
> but we fear much more for our children

People did back then too, so I'm not sure what's mediocre about it.

We've had to live with situations outside of our hands for a long time. Our
ability to alter the impact of adverse events isn't really driven by the
magnitude of said events (e.g. family vs tribe vs city vs nation vs world).

No matter the age, you just have to accept that you might encounter very
unhappy events.

~~~
throwaway5752
Thought both are out of my hands and would result in my death, I fear a 100km
diameter asteroid strike much more than being murdered.

"fear of the atomic age" is proxy for "fear of a thermonuclear exchange
between the US and the Soviet Union" for a generation of people. It's not
comparable to COVID-19 and it's not comparable to the other concerns he
listed, and for someone so deeply rooted in moral and ethical philosophy as
C.S. Lewis I'm surprised.

Anyway, it's off topic, this is my last word on it.

~~~
philipkglass
In 1948 thermonuclear weapons did not yet exist.

The bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 were about 1000 times as powerful as the
largest conventional bombs. Thermonuclear weapons came about in the 1950s. The
thermonuclear bombs the USA and USSR had in 1958 were about 1000 times as
powerful as the 1945 bombs. It was the development of thermonuclear bombs that
made nuclear weaponry the swords of civilizational extinction.

C.S. Lewis was writing about weapons 1000 times less powerful than you're
thinking of. He was also writing when the number of nuclear weapons that had
been stockpiled was much smaller.

------
mcshicks
My wife works at our local science museum. It's very tough for them, even in
good times a lot of museums scramble for funding. They were able to reopen for
a few days and then shut down again. They did PPE loans so all of the
employees still have jobs for now, but its hard to know what will happen in
the next few months, and will they be able to generate enough revenue. They do
summer camp programs and have been switching those to virtual but I'm not sure
how much revenue that will generate. Additionally they are kind of scrambling
now to get more online content. In addition to donations, memberships and
admission they have gotten some grant money in the past as well. Maybe when
there is some clarity about when and how they can operate they might get some
more donation money from local companies or philanthropists but I think the
issue is how do the hang onto their staff. I think they were hoping the PPE
loan could get them through but now its not so clear that was the best choice
for them.

------
jcahill
End of April reporting, for comparison:

> All but about 5 to 7 percent of the world’s museums are currently shuttered
> because of the coronavirus pandemic, said Peter Keller, the general director
> of the International Council of Museums. According to the council’s
> research, one in 10 may not reopen, he added.

More than 30 respondents to a 41-country survey, by the Network of European
Museum Organizations, said they feared they would have to close permanently,
among them the Museo de La Rioja and Museum of the Americas in Spain; Kornberg
Castle in Austria, the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Hungary,
and the National Historical Museum of Albania.

The gravity of the situation varies by country, depending on how much museums
rely on ticket sales and tourism, and how much government funding they
receive. Museums in the United States which survive from earned income and
philanthropy are more vulnerable than government-subsidized European
institutions. The American Alliance of Museums reported to Congress in March
that as many as 30 percent of museums could fail in the crisis, if there was
no immediate intervention.

------
caseysoftware
I've been working with this team for the last ~18 months:
[https://www.passitdown.com/](https://www.passitdown.com/)

Coming from the Library of Congress' digitization project, I knew the
importance and complexity of putting collections online so was drawn to them.

Unfortunately, what was one venue for sharing collections became the _only_
venue for sharing collections. I hope they - or other efforts like them -
manage to at least document the pieces that are going to disappear into
storage or private collections. :(

------
codingdave
The headline is misleading. This quote tells the actual story:

"In a survey released Wednesday of 760 museum directors, 33% of them said
there was either a "significant risk" of closing permanently by next fall or
that they didn't know if their institutions would survive."

It still shows a high level of uncertainty, but 1/3rd of museums are not
saying they may be shutting down in 2020, as the headline would imply. They do
have short runways, but note the discrepancy between 33% saying they aren't
sure if they will make it a year, yet 87% saying they do not have a year of
runway. 44% therefore have short runways yet do not doubt incoming funding.

What we should do is help the funding return to the other 33% in the next 6-12
months.

~~~
aqme28
I don't see how the headline is misleading. "One-third of U.S. Museums May Not
Survive the Year" vs your version: 1/3 of museums are at "significant risk of
closing permanently" within 12 months.

~~~
pmiller2
“May not survive the year” can be read as either “may close before the end of
this calendar year,” or “may close within 12 months.” Unless it’s January 1,
those are quite different statements. English sucks sometimes.

Edit: inserted the word “calendar” to clarify a little.

------
remote_phone
I see a lot of doomsday predictions, but 4 months in, I’m barely seeing any
signs of a protracted recession. Everyone seems to be doing okay, and when
bars and businesses open up, they are jam packed. Am I the only one that is
seeing a disparity between the speculations vs what I’m seeing around me? I
truly believe we are in a crisis situation but why aren’t I seeing more signs
of these doomsday predications?

~~~
buttcoinslol
> I see a lot of doomsday predictions, but 4 months in, I’m barely seeing any
> signs of a protracted recession.

Perhaps the trillions of dollars of stimulus money that has been distributed
has something to do with it? Or maybe the generous unemployment benefits the
federal government has passed out over the past four months to ensure people
could pay their bills and purchase things to stimulate the economy?

Without those things we'd be in a completely different scenario. Things may
get worse yet, we're not exactly winning the fight against COVID-19 in the US.

~~~
techdevangelist
And those enhanced unemployment benefits expire next week, so far the Senate
and White House are wanting them ‘means tested’, so it looks like they may
fall off without renewal.

~~~
buttcoinslol
If they don't provide an extension, they lose the Senate and the White House.
Trumpvilles, etc. I doubt they will gamble like that.

------
pmiller2
That reminds me: maybe I should renew some memberships early, or up my
contributions.

------
Program_Install
More fallout from the ineptness of our government I presume. Its forecasts
like this that start to mount as we continue the downward trend. Truly a
pandemic in every sense.

------
pontifier
And here I am working to open a new science museum with no funding
whatsoever... I'm currently living in a tent outside

Maybe I'm enough of a cheapskate to survive!

~~~
coronadisaster
Where?

~~~
pontifier
I just bought a 220,000 sqft building in Pine Bluff Arkansas.

The website is Serendipic.org

I'm currently just funding everything myself.

------
CalRobert
I guess the silver lining here is that the "employees" are already generally
unpaid.

~~~
devonkim
The cruel exception is in military museums where all the military funded
museums are paid somewhat decent wages but of course these wages pale in
comparison to the military intelligence trainers getting paid $650k+ / year
mostly tax-free due to being overseas.

The NBLS statistics for museum workers is highly skewed for federally funded
museums and those with long career tenures which makes it look like they're
paid nearly as much as most other white collar workers but this doesn't mean
there's actually jobs in the field. And this was all pre-COVID.

OPM has been desperately trying to get people to retire earlier by offering
huge lump sums but with healthcare the way it is, people are not retiring
which puts a drag on a strapped public sector in headcount and requisitions,
but the implication to me is that when museum persons are retiring nowadays in
public sector they're being replaced with cheaper contractors or simply not
being filled in at all. I'm familiar with entire libraries being shut down
after a single librarian retired.

------
codeulike
Museum Museum

------
irrational
What percentage of restaurants might not survive?

What other types of establishments are likely to have a high percentage not
surviving?

~~~
pmiller2
Something like 20% of restaurants that were open in February are now
permanently closed. It might be even a little more than that — I don’t have
the data right in front of me. Extend that timeline to next fall, as in the
article, and probably almost all the non-chain restaurants would be done for.

Edit: it’s worse than I thought. Data from Yelp suggest about half of
restaurants may be permanently closed. I have no idea how that breaks down
into national and regional chains vs independently owned restaurants, however.

See [https://www.eater.com/2020/6/26/21304219/over-50-percent-
of-...](https://www.eater.com/2020/6/26/21304219/over-50-percent-of-yelp-
restaurants-have-closed-permanently)

------
patja
Museum directors all agree that anyone who sells museum holdings to meet
operating expenses is blacklisted from future visiting collections. Let them
sell some of their holdings and all will be well. Many of them are sitting on
a vast inventory of items that are never seen by anyone.

~~~
snowwrestler
The purpose of a museum is to share knowledge, and selling objects into
private collection is a direct violation of that mission. They might as well
set the stuff on fire; the effect would be the same.

Edit to add: it's a myth that objects not currently on public display are
"never seen by anyone." Some get seen by the public when used or loaned out
for temporary, traveling, or themed exhibits. The rest are generally made
available to researchers with interest in that field.

------
garmaine
What happens to the collections...

~~~
trhway
the same as with other assets - we're entering the greatest wealth
redistribution (it would for example definitely beat the one triggered by
2008). The smaller and more vulnerable get distressed, and are going to be
scooped up on the cheap by the big ones who have access to liquidity.

~~~
nordsieck
> we're entering the greatest wealth redistribution

I can confidently say: this is nothing compared to the fall of the USSR or the
aftermath of the Plague.

~~~
nabla9
I saw BBC article having title "How the Black Death made the rich richer"
[https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the-
black-...](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the-black-death-
make-the-rich-richer)

But what I remember from economic history and what the article actually says
is mostly opposite.

>Before the plague erupted, several centuries of population growth had
produced a labour surplus, which was abruptly replaced with a labour shortage
when many serfs and free peasants died. Historians have argued that this
labour shortage allowed those peasants that survived the pandemic to demand
better pay or to seek employment elsewhere. Despite government resistance,
serfdom and the feudal system itself were ultimately eroded.

This was the main effect of the plague. The wealth concentration BBC talks
about affected much fewer people.

This time the same is not going to happens because covid just increases demand
for automation.

~~~
juniper_strong
This time the same is not going to happen because the plague killed ~50% of
the population in Europe over a four year period, while covid won't kill even
1%, with most of the covid deaths being among retirees.

If 50% of working age people died, both wages and automation would increase.

------
WalterBright
I'm puzzled by today's news on the vaccine. They were saying they would not
make it available until it was proven "safe and effective". They said the
vaccine may not be effective.

But my understanding is the previous trials demonstrated it was safe. If it
turns out to be ineffective, at least no harm is done. So why not make it
available? If it works, and is even only partially effective, it would be a
big help.

I recall they said the vaccine would be considered "ineffective" if it worked
something like less than 50% of the time. But wouldn't a 25% effective vaccine
be a vast improvement over nothing?

~~~
kgwgk
Something may seem safe when you give to 20 people and less safe when you give
it to 20’000 or 20’000’000 people. If it has 1% chance of severe complications
that will probably by missed in the phase 1 study.

~~~
pmiller2
Also, some harmful effects take time to show up.

~~~
WalterBright
Set that possibility against the predictable deaths of 100,000+ people due to
waiting.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The bulk of deaths in the US were due to forcing sick into nursing homes. That
mistake is unlikely to be made again. Risk of death has thus been
significantly reduced and still on the downswing.

~~~
WalterBright
We're losing a thousand a day.

------
kilroy123
This is exactly why I created:
[https://randomdailyart.com](https://randomdailyart.com)

To bring art to people who can't go see it in person. I haven't been able to
visit any museums or art galleries in the past few months. I would really like
to.

------
matz1
Just end the shutdown, its never a good strategy in the first place, its doing
more harm than good.

~~~
Jweb_Guru
As you may have noticed, many states have attempted to end the shutdown, and
then quickly reinstated it when death tolls increased dramatically.

~~~
matz1
The case raise dramatically but not the death tolls.

~~~
zaarn
Death tolls require some time to go up.

If you lift lockdown, lots of people get infects. It takes a few days, maybe a
week to show symptoms bad enough to go to a doctor for testing. This is the
point in time when cases begin to go up. Imagine if you lifted the lockdown
for a day and went back.

One to two weeks after that, people will get more seriously ill, requiring
hospitalization. Initially this can be treated easy at a (presumably) low-load
hospital with no issue, the death toll is low.

One more week and you have the majority of cases in the hospital, this is
where most people will die. A month after you lifted the lockdown.

Now imagine not locking down after that one day. After 1 month, you're at the
peak of Day 1 infections, the next day the peak of day 2 infections etc. It
compounds fast and can overwhelm a hospital.

Once a hospital is unable to care for all patients properly, triage will be
applied. People with good recovery chances will receive treatment, those who
are risk groups will not.

That's when your death toll will explode very suddenly.

~~~
matz1
Of course, the death require some time to show up, some time in 2 weeks, some
time in 70 years...

Hospital are frequently overwhelmed even before this particular virus, its not
new and yet we didn't require shutdown back then.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Hospital are frequently overwhelmed even before this particular virus

Not on the level of local, or even less statewide, hospital systems. It's true
that the US is particularly vulnerable to things like this because the
structure of the healthcare system leaves very little slack capacity, but
healthcare systems at, say, the county level are not routinely exceeding all
available ICU, ventilator, etc., capacity (because of the insurance-network
based way that hospital preferences are often driven, rather than intelligent
capacity-and-location-based distribution, it's probably more common that
individual hospitals hit capacity when the local system as a whole is in fine
shape, though.)

> its not new and yet we didn't require shutdown back then

Even if the premise was true, which as noted it's not, this argument overlooks
that if capacity exhaustion wasn't driven by a particular easily communicable
disease, a shutdown wouldn't do anything to manage it.

The shutdown is not due to the healthcare system situation _alone_ , but the
combination of situation _and_ the contribution of COVID-19 to the situation.

~~~
matz1
>Not on the level of local, or even less statewide, hospital systems

In 2018 :

[https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-
patie...](https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/)

~~~
dragonwriter
That the only example you can find is the worst US flu season in recent
history with about double the impact on most measures of a typical year pretty
much disproves your “frequeently” claim all by itself.

[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-
seasons.html](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html)

Given the nature of seasonal flu, it's quite likely that by the time that was
noticed, the impact lag time of any control measures would have made them
pointless, but maybe there is an argument that control measures would also
have been warranted in 2017-2018. But, in any case, health systems in the US
being overwhelmed, at the local community—at least urban and suburban, the
rural situation can be worse because of the impact of variations when small
numbers are involved—is not, contrary to your claim, a frequent occurrence.

------
gen220
If only the directors of museums could sell or take out loans on some
vanishingly small percentage of their collections...

When you don’t put your most valuable assets on your balance sheet (but do
place the cost of acquiring them as expenses) [0], you can’t reasonably expect
to be financially stable.

Implicitly, these museums are saying that they’d rather lay off all their
staff, than count their art towards their assets [1]. In my opinion, this has
always been the real story with financial hardship in the museum world. They
have been suffering financially for decades now. Every time membership
declines or attendance stalls, they are doomed to teeter closer to the edge.

[0]:
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262403](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262403)

[1]: see, for example, this financial audit of the museum of Boston. “In
accordance with current practice generally followed by museums, collections
are generally not recorded as assets in the accompanying financial statements.
Purchased additions to the collections are recorded as expenses at the time
acquired.” ... “ Museum policy specifies that proceeds from the deaccessioning
of an item may only be used for the conservation or acquisition of other
collections items.” [https://www.mos.org/sites/dev-
elvis.mos.org/files/docs/about...](https://www.mos.org/sites/dev-
elvis.mos.org/files/docs/about-us/mos_financial-statement_2016.pdf)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Business logic that works in tech doesn't apply to museums. The ancients
aren't making more and better history every year.

If you sell an irreplaceable object to make a profit at the end of the
quarter, you can't just buy a new one when times are better. On the other
hand, the ancients aren't making more history, so your collection never goes
out of date. If you lay off all your staff, _as long as you keep the
collection in good storage conditions,_ you can hire new staff a century later
and reopen just fine.

Museum policy that prevents dumping of assets is good policy. A museum that
sells its collection is no longer a museum.

~~~
sangnoir
Amazing how HN frequently complains about Private Equity buying up tech
companies and killing the golden goose for the sake of short term gains, yet
the top comment suggests museums do exactly that. _(Shrugs)_

~~~
Wowfunhappy
As opposed to the museum shutting down completely?

I mean, look, I agree, the idea of a museum selling an art piece to make ends
meet leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. But I'd rather the museums stay
open.

~~~
sangnoir
> As opposed to the museum shutting down completely?

Yes. Shutting down temporary for the short or even medium term is better for
humanity,if that is the cost to maintain long-term public access

The primary purpose of museums is not profit or employment, but housing
cultural artefacts. IMO it is better (for humanity) if all employees are
furloughed or even fired, and the buildings shuttered until a time they are
viable again - even if it's a whole new organisation that rises from the ashes
or if collections have to be transferred to a different surviving museum.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
...I think I may have been misunderstanding something here. If a museum goes
bankrupt, what happens to their collection? Is there some legal avenue where
they can keep everything in storage until they (hopefully) get more funding
down the road?

