Denver museum update

Seven months after opening its much celebrated Daniel Libeskind-designed building, at a cost of $110 million [see A.i.A., Feb. '07], the Denver Art Museum announced in April that it had laid off 38 employees--or 14 percent of its staff--though the museum's staffing level is still 15 percent higher than before the expansion. Eight positions were eliminated and 30 employees accepted a voluntary buyout program, which included two months' salary and benefits. Explaining the cutbacks, the museum has said that bad weather affected attendance and that it took a hit on the free admission offered during the opening weekend. For the first six months the museum reported 380,000 visitors and now expects to receive 750,000 by the end of this fiscal year, though it had earlier anticipated close to a million.

As arts journalist Tyler Green speculated in his blog, Modern Art Notes on artsjournal.com, the free entry for the 34,000 attendees shouldn't have cost the museum more than $200,000, a sum that presumably would have been partially offset by cafe and gift-shop sales. In any case, it shouldn't make or break the museum's $25 million budget.

In more positive news, DAM announced on May 1 that it had exceeded the $1.5 million fundraising goal needed to match the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation challenge grant to support conservation programs. The foundation awarded the museum $1.75 million in December 2005, most of which was contingent upon DAM meeting its goal. The museum was also recently named one of the New Wonders of the World by Conde Nast Traveler magazine, and made the American Institute of Architects' list of the top 150 works of all time.

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