I want to draw your attention to an interesting conversation: “The Future of Public Art Institutions: Ensuring Financial Survival” put on by Talking Galleries. The compelling exchange deepens the context around the funding debate that ultimately trickles down to every corner of museums and whose effects manifest in the form of labor disputes, deaccessioning debates, and the make up of boards of directors. Ultimately, these discussions challenge us to define our own threshold for acceptable sources of money to sustain museums in the United States.

Key topics:

• Th financial challenges of public institutions

• The relationships between donors and institutions

• Additional revenue streams for museums

• How policy and legislation affect non-profit institutions currently

• The community’s role in sustaining institutions

“We’re all in the cultural sector and the things museums remind me is that most things don’t survive. We see different civilizations and all the things they’ve left behind that don’t exist anymore. We should remember that we, too, are heading in this direction where our civilization as we know it will cease to exist. This is just what happens. I think that when things close, they make space for new things.” –Deana Haggag, Mellon Foundation

“We have a $1,700,000,000 endowment which was $225,000,000 in 1995 when I started. So we've grown the endowment enormously. The market has been helpful, but so have our donors. We've also grown the building twice, we've exploded the collection – 85,000 object in 1995 and over 200,000 objects today – our budget in 1995 was $83 or $84 million and it's $185 million now. So I sweat bullets over that. That $1.75 billion endowment produces $74–75 million so we still have to find $110 million, so I worry every day. Do I think we're going to close tomorrow morning if we screw up? No. We have the resources not to do that, but do I think we can blow up over a reasonably short period of time? Absolutely. Absolutely. I do not believe that there's a tablet from Moses that says ‘Thou shalt survive all of this.’ So, no, I have not had a good night sleep in pretty close to 25 years.” –Glenn Lowry, Museum of Modern Art

“Our entire cultural sector exists on a foundation of very specific tax codes…” –Deana Haggag, Mellon Foundation

“Smaller cities are thinking about how do we become a place that people who could live anywhere want to live. And most regional economic development strategies have been about attracting a company not a person… The next wave will be ‘What can we do to get the people that companies want to hire to live here.’ And there’s very little that does that like investing in culture. –Pete Scantland, Orange Barrel Media