In the Arts: Magazine Pins Museums’ Woes on Bursting ‘Bubble’

The wave of layoffs and cost cuts at museums are a byproduct not just of the recession but also of a “museum bubble” built on risky investments and outsize revitalization projects, arts magazine Artnet argues.

With their speculative investment strategies and hunger for expensive showpiece spaces, “museum boards and higher-ups not only participated in the madness of the ‘bubble era’ – the period of super-charged, risk-fueled craziness that the world is now trying desperately to recover from – but actively fed it,” Artnet‘s Ben Davis writes.

In other arts news, a bill before Congress would restore tax advantages for “fractional gifts” of art, in which the rights to a work are given away incrementally year by year, says The Wall Street Journal. Sen. Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, has proposed undoing a 2006 law that prevents donors from reaping tax advantages on gains in the donated work’s value.

Plus, colleges and universities are shrinking arts offerings for the forthcoming school year, according to The New York Times. Campus officials say the nature of arts programs, which more often involve smaller classes and non-tenured instructors, magnify the impact of budget cuts.

Also, Bloomberg reports that Museum of Modern Art head Glenn Lowry earned $1.32-million in the 2008-09 fiscal year, down nearly one-third from his pay the previous year. Mr. Lowry was the country’s highest-paid museum executive last year, according to the Chronicle’s compensation survey.

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