The Recession and Museums

I thought it would be interesting to see how the current state of the economy has affected museums as institutions. As we know, museums have now taken the marketing aspect of the game much more seriously, as evidenced through some of the very impressive websites out there.

I was looking into MOCA-LA and it seems as though they have run into some troubles lately. Although this could be attributed to a mis-management of sorts, it seems that MOCA lost around 44 million of their $50 million endowment.

LA billionaire Eli Broad offered a rescue deal to the museum to keep it up and running. They are still discussing the possibility of a merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It seems as though in the case of MOCA-LA, it may have been an issue of management, and if Broad's donation goes through, he will have a number of guidelines for them to follow. Hopefully it can be resolved, especially given Los Angeles's position as a node in the art world.