December/January/February 2009/2010

Our recent down-sizing has been associated with the collapse of the financial market in September 2008, and, while there is some truth in that, it is more accurate to say that it just made a difficult situation worse. We had begun planning for a reduction in force as early as the previous spring, when we realized that the extraordinary generosity by private individuals, foundations, and businesses that has largely maintained the DIA during my tenure could not continue indefinitely. When I arrived here in 1999, the DIA received $8 million a year from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA), a full 25 percent of our annual operating budget. This figure itself represented a drop from nearly $17 million in 1990, when the DIA's budget was more like $24 million. That situation can be traced directly to the governing structure established in 1919, when the then privately run Detroit Art Museum became the Detroit Institute of Arts and, fatefully, the City of Detroit's Art Department. It was a classic public/private partnership not uncommon in the United States for much of the twentieth century, with the public entity supplying support for the operations (building, staff, etc.) and the private side—in our case called the Founders Society—providing the art and supporting related programming. This arrangement looked very good in the "Roaring '20s" when the city was booming and tax revenues expanding exponentially. It looked less so in the 1930s, when the museum essentially closed and staff was reduced to half a dozen people. The 1940s and 1950s brought the good times back, but the late 1960s and 1970s saw the city’s revenue base reduced dramatically. Faced with a permanent loss of significant city support, the museum’s leaders turned to the state of Michigan which, with the political leadership of Senator Jack Faxon, became the single most significant supporter of the DIA’s annual operating budget. In return, the DIA provided a wide array of services across the state, including special exhibitions and art conservation for minimal costs to the recipients. As, in turn, this support faded with the underfunding of MCACA (at the time of writing, there is nothing in this year’s state budget for arts organizations’ operations or programs), the DIA focused its fundraising efforts on the private sector and, for the last ten years, managed not only to maintain all programming but completely renovate a crumbling edifice.

But the years of public support for the DIA obviated the need to build an unrestricted operating endowment and, if you review the major art museums of this country, you will find that most of them have either solid, reliable tax support or a healthy operating endowment. After years of tax-based support, the DIA now has neither. When, six months ago, we eliminated sixty-three positions, some responded by asserting that, if the DIA was really in trouble, rich people would come to the rescue. Well, such a thing did not happen in previous crises and it is not realistic to expect it to happen now. Thousands of people—many rich, many not—support the DIA year in year out but, until we can secure at least one of the two other sources of support, we will continue to struggle. As the DIA needs to raise about $350 million for an endowment, this is not likely to happen any time soon. And, right now, the likelihood of additional taxes also seems remote. It is profoundly ironic that the DIA now looks so well-heeled and that, by maintaining as much of our programming as we can, we actually undercut the sense of emergency. But we can only cut so much before we become a different, less interesting institution. Much is made in the political arena of how important "quality of life" is for an economically reinvigorated Michigan, but the DIA is not the only major cultural institution in dire straights and, unless a comprehensive solution is devised to give our sector a measure of security, I think it’s safe to say that "Cool Cities"—or however you chose to characterize quality of life—will remain a catch phrase rather than a state of being.

Graham W. J. Beal
Director