N.Y. Arts Institutions Feel the Budget Squeeze

In the recent season opener of “Sex and the City,” Carrie Bradshaw, aiming for a perfect New York experience, headed on a Thursday to the Guggenheim Museum--only to find that she’d come on the one day of the week the museum is regularly closed.

Bummer for Carrie. But hardly a full picture of what can await visitors to New York’s cultural institutions these days.

Hit with cutbacks in city funding, a loss of tourism after the Sept. 11 attacks and a decline in private and corporate donations because of the faltering economy, arts and culture organizations have reduced their programs and services as they try to ride out the storm.

Some places have cut their hours. Others have fired staff or failed to fill vacancies. Exhibitions have been delayed by a year or two, or completely cut from the schedule. Community outreach programs have been trimmed. Marketing and advertising budgets have been slashed.

And those efforts might still not prove enough. Although a city budget cut of 5% announced in June was met with a sigh of relative relief by arts groups--especially in the wake of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s initial proposal to slice 15% of their funding--more cuts are expected by fall, and institutions that rely on city dollars are continuing to tighten their belts.

“Everyone is dealing with the problems in their own way, based on the variables that affect their institution,” said Karen Brooks Hopkins, chairman of the Cultural Institutions Group, whose 34 members are in buildings or on land owned wholly or in part by the city. Members of the CIG--which range from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Bronx Zoo--got a total of about $100 million from the city in 2001.

Hopkins also is president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which recently laid off its vice president of finance as a cost-saving measure. In addition, she said, the academy has reduced some free and low-cost music offerings, cut back on advertising and otherwise lessened the need for staffing.

Like other cultural institutions, “we’re just trying to hold on,” Hopkins said. “But more than this 5% would be very detrimental.”

In all likelihood, more is coming. Budget modifications, a standard part of the budget procedure that usually occurs around November, may be moved up this year.

“It’s unclear when, but I assume it will be early fall,” said New York Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate Levin, who painted a less than rosy picture of what they might hold. “We’re going to do what we can to make the devastation as little as possible. But there’s no way around it--the groups that depend the most heavily on the city will fare the worst.”

Even to date, some have been hit harder than others. Although its city funding has dropped by about $1 million, down from $13.4 million the previous year, the Met, with its vast resources, has managed to make trims that are “hopefully, not really noticeable,” spokesman Harold Holzer said.

“We cut $5 million from our budget. We cut advertising and marketing. We cut a few ancillary programs. We stopped filling vacancies.” But, Holzer said, “There were no cancellations, no truncated schedules, no dark days in the museum beyond the Mondays that we’re always closed.”

Still, the Met was not exempt from post-Sept. 11 turmoil. Visitor levels fell off sharply with the drop in tourism, and though they have been creeping back up, the museum is still down 20% from 2001 levels. Despite its $5 million in trims, Holzer said, “with the loss of income from admissions, the shops, the parking garage, we still are finishing the year with a budget deficit of around $7 million.”

Some culture institutions are trying, despite a hardly conducive economic climate, to enlarge their philanthropic base or rely more on income they can earn themselves.

“We’re trying ... to explore the potential of philanthropy in the black business world,” said Lowery Sims, director of the Studio Museum in Harlem. “We’re just in the baby steps. We’re trying to expand our profile nationwide.” With a board that includes trustees from the Midwest and California and an exhibition program that emphasizes African American artists from around the country, the museum has the “potential” to attract more individual donations, Sims said.

The Here Arts Center in SoHo has long sought to base 65% of its budget on income earned from its three experimental theater spaces, two galleries and cafe. “We are already very independent. That was just part of our business plan here,” executive director Kristin Marting said. Despite its independent stance, the loss of more than $23,000 from various city sources has been another tough break.

So Marting is working on a new, pared-back budget, and the Here may have to postpone some of its projects. But while so many New Yorkers have to do with less in so many areas, does a reduced program at Here really matter?

It does, according to a key argument of arts groups in their quest to forestall further cuts. New York and culture are forever intertwined, they point out; cripple the latter, and you reduce the allure of the former, and thus its ability to raise the dollars it needs for essential city services.

No one really denies that the city’s cultural organizations have great symbolic value and economic leveraging power for the city.

As the Met’s Holzer put it: “It’s nerve-racking. The imponderables are nerve-racking.”

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Karin Lipson is a reporter at Newsday, a Tribune company.