Doom, doom, doom

Following on from Carol Vogel's NYT piece on belt-tightening at American art museums, Alexandra Peers documents more cost-cutting measures (and fundraising opps) in the Wall Street Journal.

Going down:

• Temperatures (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City has turned down the thermostat)
• Free drinks (MoMA won't be hosting any parties at Art Basel Miami Beach this year)
• Staff numbers (the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu has laid off nearly half its staff).

Going up:

• Interest rates on the variable auction-rate securities (I don't know what that means but the big US art museums have some fancy-pants ways with money)
• "Your name here" spaces for corporate sponsors on the wall, and in the front of job titles (think 'the Ernst & Young Curator of Contemporary New Zealand Art').

In equally dramatic oh-noes! news: all Conde Nast publications have been told to cut both staff and ops budgets by 5%. This includes two titles quite dear to my heart, the New Yorker and Wired. And I thought my week couldn't get any worse.