The Carnegie Museum of Art, which discovered an operating deficit of $300,000 in its annual operating budget of $10 million, announced Thursday that a staff reorganization forced it to eliminate six full-time positions and one part-time job.
Lynn Zelevansky, the museum’s director since August 2009, met with museum trustees Thursday afternoon.
“We deeply regret that positions of current staff members are being affected,” Ms. Zelevansky said in a telephone interview.
Positions were eliminated in curatorial, exhibitions, marketing, publications and education. Employees were offered severance pay based partly on their length of service and left Thursday.
“Every department lost people. Everybody was affected,” Ms. Zelevansky said.
The museum must increase the number of visitors, provide first-class experiences for them and develop a secure financial structure. The reorganization was done to create teams who will focus on attracting the museums’ audience, she said.
Museums are struggling to remain relevant. Last month, Ms. Zelevansky said, during a conference of museum directors in Mexico City, many colleagues called their organizations “post-industrial museums” to describe arts centers founded in cities once filled with heavy industry where many donors were wealthy industrialists who gave generously.
”The challenge for museums like us is for revenue to keep pace with expenses. You really have to try to find ways to do that,“ Ms. Zelevansky said, adding that the deficit had to be dealt with because expenses rise every year.
Last June, Ms. Zelevansky said, museum leaders realized that part of its draw on the endowment had been budgeted twice.
“Because of the way our particular budgeting works, it took us awhile to figure out that it was a systemic problem. We figured that out in October of 2014. We resolved the problems with the 2014 budget.”
In August, the museum began drafting its 2015 budget and gave it to Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh staff to review.
“There are transfers that come from various sources that go into our operating budget. Some of it is operating endowment, designated for Carnegie Museum of Art. Some of it is split among the museums,” Ms. Zelevansky said. “A portion of that got counted twice. We were overdrawn in certain areas and couldn’t understand why.”
The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh operates the art museum, natural history museum, The Andy Warhol Museum and the Carnegie Science Center.
Senior staff remains to minimize the impact on programming.
“Fine arts and decorative arts are now going to share an assistant curator and a curatorial assistant,” Ms. Zelevansky said.
Reorganization will continue.
“We are quite serious about all of this. We want to look at the way we use our office space — where people really should be situated instead of where they are situated so that that will reinforce the new structure,” she added.
The art museum’s catering contract expires at the end of this year and Jo Ellen Parker, the new president and chief executive officer of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, has organized a dining task force.
“The nature of the food service needs to be changed. There would be no cafeteria line or busing your own plates. That would be my preference,” Ms. Zelevansky said.
Recently, a dining consultant reviewed the museum’s cafe and catering service.
The dining consultant’s opinion, “was that there was more money to be made,” Ms. Zelevansky said. “There’s a feeling that we could do better with rental revenues” for weddings receptions and hall rentals.
Caterers want exclusive contracts, she said, because, “They don’t make money on the restaurants. They make money on the catering.”
Near the end of last year, the art museum hired Lori Braszo, a former Saks Fifth Avenue employee, to oversee the four museum stores and display the merchandise so it generates more revenue. The art museum renovated its store last year and highlights design objects, including casual chairs. The Andy Warhol Museum tripled the size of its store last year.
Jonathan Gaugler, a museum spokesman, said the annual operating budget of $10 million does not include all the costs associated with running the art museum at 4400 Forbes Ave. in Oakland.
“That figure does not include money set aside to buy new art or endowments that cover certain exhibitions, such as the Carnegie International,” Mr. Gaugler said, adding that those funds are restricted solely for those purposes.
The museum will have 56 employees now, Ms. Zelevansky said, adding that that figure does not, however, represent the total picture.
“If we were a free-standing museum, you would have to count all the people in central development, finance, facilities, planning, security and human resources,” she said. Those employees are on the central administration payroll of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
Marylynne Pitz at 412-263-1648 or mpitz@post-gazette.com.
First Published: February 12, 2015, 11:28 p.m.
Updated: February 13, 2015, 4:41 a.m.
