Met Museum Completes Staff Reduction Program

NEW YORK, JUNE 22, 2009)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that it had completed this week the museum-wide staff reduction program announced on March 12, 2009 as crucial to its efforts to forge a new, reduced operating budget for the 2010 fiscal year that begins July 1.

Through a combination of voluntary retirements, the closing of retail outlets, attrition and a hiring freeze, the expiration of staff contracts, and involuntary personnel reductions, the Museum has now pared its full- and part-time work force by a total of 357 positions, both administrative and professional, union and non-union, or some 14% since January 1.

“This realignment is a painful but unavoidable consequence of the global financial crisis,” stated James R. Houghton, Chairman of the Board of Trustees. “Significant short- and long-term reductions in income from the Met’s operating endowment, along with the retail downturn, and recent declines in membership and admissions income, have combined to compel us to craft a budget that sharply reduces costs while faithfully preserving the mission of the Museum. Acting with these obligations in mind, the Trustees and Management believe they have placed the institution on a sure footing to manage its resources over the next twelve months while continuing to offer its local, national, and international publics continued access to both its collections and its programs.”

The Museum announced three months ago on March 12 that it had begun this process by eliminating 53 positions at recently closed satellite shops around the country, and a further 74 positions in the remainder of its Merchandising operation. By the end of the fiscal year June 30, the Metropolitan will have closed 15 satellite shops.

Additionally, in May a total of 95 employees at the Met elected to accept a voluntary retirement incentive package offered to those age 55 or older and with at least 15 years of service to the institution. Over the last two weeks, the Museum has further reduced its work force by 74 union and non-union employees. With the previous Merchandising actions, all these staff reductions total 296 positions. The remainder of the total work force reduction of 357 has come primarily through attrition (a hiring freeze has been in place since January 1). The Museum also eliminated salary increases for FY 2010, and imposed new and ongoing expense reductions while introducing new programs for revenue enhancements.

“Ever since the first signs of global economic distress, our entire staff has worked tirelessly to close looming budget gaps in order to safeguard the museum’s mission and sustain its covenant with the public,” commented Director Thomas P. Campbell and President Emily K. Rafferty. “We believe we enter the new fiscal year well positioned to meet this goal. The savings to the institution from staff reductions alone will be more than $10 million, and while this does not entirely close the budget gap for 2010, it makes it possible to continue serving visitors and members at the highest possible levels, consistent with our historic commitments to excellence and innovation. It remains our goal that the public discern no difference at all in the visitor experience it has been our privilege to offer to them here.

“As we reported when we announced these difficult choices three months ago, we re-emphasize the Museum’s determination to continue providing a safe repository for its collections and a haven of reflection, education, and inspiration for its diverse visitors from around the city and around the globe. This commitment we reaffirm today.”

“At the same time,” they added, “we will miss our former colleagues enormously, and extend to both our retirees and those affected by the involuntary reduction program our gratitude and respect for the work they have done for so many years to sustain our institution.”

In FY 2010, the Metropolitan Museum will have a full- and part-time work force of approximately 2,200.

Burton does "Alice"

By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
You might have gone down the rabbit hole before. But never with a guide quite as attuned to the fantastic as Tim Burton.

Those who have grown curiouser and curiouser about what the offbeat reinventor of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory might conjure up in his version of Alice in Wonderland can feast their eyes on this array of concept art and publicity images, due to hang in movie theaters this week to promote the March 5, 2010, release.

"It has been Burton-ized" is how producer Richard Zanuck describes the director's vision of the Lewis Carroll classic. Many elements are familiar, from the enigmatic Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) to the fierce Jabberwock (Christopher Lee). But none has been presented in this sort of visually surreal fashion.

"We finished shooting in December after only 40 days," Zanuck says. Now the live action is being merged with CG animation and motion-capture creatures, and then transferred into 3-D.

The traditional tale has been freshened with a blast of girl power, courtesy of writer Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast). Alice, 17, attends a party at a Victorian estate only to find she is about to be proposed to in front of hundreds of snooty society types. Off she runs, following a white rabbit into a hole and ending up in Wonderland, a place she visited 10 years before yet doesn't remember.

Among those who welcome her back is the Mad Hatter, a part tailor-made for Johnny Depp as he collaborates with Burton for the seventh time. "This character is off his rocker," Zanuck says.

Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska, 19, best known for HBO's In Treatment, has the coveted title role. "There is something real, honest and sincere about her," Zanuck says. "She's not a typical Hollywood starlet."

There is the usual Burton-esque ghoulishness (Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen, whose favorite retort is "Off with their heads," has a moat filled with bobbing noggins), but Zanuck assures most kids can handle it. "The book itself is pretty dark," he notes. "This is for little people and people who read it when they were little 50 years ago."

ArtFriday: Libby Saylor

Two things I have to reward: patience and initiative. Initiative, because Libby emailed me with pictures of her artwork and I do like receiving things like that. It brightens things up no end to know that you are a person somebody wants to show their art to. Patience, because Libby emailed me ages ago just as I had given up on ArtFriday V2, so I feel I owe it to her.

My Lord, what a selection to choose from. I decided to go for four of her paintings over her photographs or collages for the simple reason that I feel they are her main works and I should show them. You, however, should go check them out yourself.

As to why I chose these painting: Everybody, every once in a while, should indulge in epic uses of colour. It’s good for soul.

You can find Libby Saylor at her website libbysaylor.com.

Francis Bacon @ the Met

The first major exhibition in New York in twenty years devoted to one of the most compelling painters of the twentieth century, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective features some 130 works--sixty-five paintings and as many archival items from public and private collections from around the world--that span the entirety of the artist’s full and celebrated career. Marking the centenary of the artist’s birth in Dublin in 1909, the exhibition brings together the most significant works from each period of Bacon’s career, focusing on the key subjects and themes that run through his extraordinary creative output. The presentation affords the most comprehensive examination to date of Bacon’s sources and working processes, offering a reevaluation of the artist’s work in light of a range of new interpretations and archival materials that have emerged since his death in 1992.

Michelle Obama @ the Met

Joe Polifrone on C-Monster.net

joe polifrone on sweet-station