The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum said Friday that it was laying off 20 employees across the museum — or 7 percent of its staff — starting immediately, in the aftermath of financial challenges that have continued to snowball over the last decade.
Mariët Westermann, the museum’s director and chief executive since 2024, said in a statement that efforts to improve the fiscal picture, including growing the endowment, programming fewer exhibitions and raising ticket prices, had not done enough.
“Our overall financial picture is not where it needs to be,” she wrote in a staff letter. “To be fiscally responsible now and position the museum well for the future, we have made the difficult decision to reorganize some teams and reduce staffing across the museum.”
Senior leadership at the Guggenheim will not be taking pay cuts, according to a museum spokeswoman, Tina Vaz. The cuts are spread over six departments, including advancement, education, publications and archives, but do not affect curators and top executives. Additionally, the museum’s chief curator, Naomi Beckwith, who is organizing two major exhibitions in Europe for outside institutions, will continue in her role (and she is finishing work on a major solo exhibition for the artist Rashid Johnson, a former museum trustee, which opens at the Guggenheim in April).
The layoffs were the latest sign that New York’s museum sector has suffered from rising overhead costs and lower attendance since the Covid pandemic. Earlier this month, the Brooklyn Museum said that it was facing a projected $10 million deficit, planned to cut 40 employees, and would mount fewer exhibitions. On Friday, the New York City Council held a hearing to assess the possible effects of budget cuts on city services, including cultural institutions.
Guggenheim officials declined to explain what the museum’s projected deficit was or how much Westermann is being paid as director and chief executive, saying that they would release financial figures later this year. The museum’s operating budget in 2023, the latest tax filing on record, was $72.5 million and the endowment was $124.6 million. (Salaries account for about 60 percent of the budget.) For each of the previous four years, Richard Armstrong, the director until 2023, had total compensation packages, including retirement income and deferred compensation, that topped $1 million a year, according to tax filings.
This will be the third round of layoffs in five years at the Guggenheim. Two waves of earlier cuts resulted in more than 30 employees losing their jobs, including two deputy directors.
Perhaps more than anything, the Guggenheim has relied on international tourism, which has dropped significantly since the pandemic. It is also awaiting the promises of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, its outpost in the United Arab Emirates, which has suffered controversies and delays. The museum still has not announced an opening date for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which is under construction.
Olga Brudastova, a union leader representing Guggenheim employees through the Local 2110 chapter of the United Auto Workers, said the union was provided no advance notice about the layoffs. The union has filed a grievance and is demanding to bargain over the layoffs. “We will take whatever steps are necessary to protect our members’ jobs,” she said.
With its landmark Frank Lloyd Wright building on the Upper East Side, the Guggenheim gained popularity thanks to an ambitious exhibition program. But its last sensation was seven years ago, when curators staged a show for the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint and saw record attendance with more than 600,000 visitors coming to see the artist’s mystical, abstract paintings.
In her letter Friday to employees, Westermann, 62, said that she hoped the cuts would help the museum work more efficiently. “This reorganization will allow us to work more collaboratively, with new synergies and fewer silos,” she said. “Some of these changes will require the redefinition of existing roles and the addition of new and different roles going forward.”
But she was optimistic about the museum’s future, saying, “I remain steadfastly hopeful and enthusiastic about the opportunities before us.”
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