Bill de Blasio’s 2021 Budget Would See a Significant Decrease in Funding for New York’s Museums, Already Hit Hard by the Lockdown

Museums and other cultural
organizations in New York stand to take a significant hit next year
from reduced city funding. As New York City’s months-long
budget process enters its final stretch, the mayor’s office has
made deeper cuts to arts programming as part of a broader effort to
cut spending amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s
executive budget
plan for the next fiscal
year, which was released last
week, saw
across-the-board cuts to municipal services as the city attempts to
rebound from the economic crisis and continue to “fund life-saving
measures,” the mayor said in a statement. The proposed financial
plan is a revision of de Blasio’s preliminary budget
proposal, which was
issued in January, prior to the onset of the coronavirus
pandemic.

In the latest proposal, the
Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), which oversees the city’s
creative organizations, has been allocated $137 million—$10.6 million less than the
mayor’s preliminary budget accounted for in January and $7.3
million (or five percent) less than the executive budget
this time last year. 

New York City’s cultural budget is the largest in the country,
and often outpaces the National Endowment for the Arts, which last
year boasted a $155 million budget. Although the proposed decrease
would stand to put the NEA back out in front of New York, the
cutbacks aren’t as bad as some
in the sector feared they might be.   

“While we don’t take any
reductions lightly, especially in the middle of this crisis when
the funds are desperately needed, we have mitigated the reductions
given the broader fiscal realities the city is dealing with,” a
representative from the DCLA said in a statement to Artnet News.
“We are committed to working toward an FY21 adopted budget that
supports our constituents and accounts for the challenges this
crisis continues to present to our city.”

The spokesperson said that the
DCLA worked with City Hall and the Office of Management and Budget to come up
with creative savings strategies. Among these were heat, light, and
power reductions, which accounted for $2.7 million in savings, and
the elimination of currently vacant positions at the DCLA. Other
reductions will be made in the form of cuts to CreateNYC, the city’s first
comprehensive plan for overseeing the city’s arts and culture
resources, and to emergency funds.  

Of the city’s major
institutions, the Metropolitan Museum of Art—which has already
stated it expects to lose $100
million as a result of the lockdown—was hit the hardest.
De Blasio’s executive budget
earmarked $17.87 million for
the museum—$4.5 million less than the preliminary figure.
Meanwhile, the allotment for the Brooklyn Museum was slashed from
$8.03 million to $7.9
million. Neither institution immediately responded to Artnet News’s
request for comment. 

One of the final steps in the
creation of the yearly financial plan, the executive budget is a
proposal and does not represent the actual budget for the city.
There are extended negotiations still in store that are likely to
result in a shift in the figures. Following the mayor’s submission
of the executive budget, the city council will hold a series of
public hearings to ensure that the plan represents all districts
throughout New York. Through May and June, the two parties will
negotiate the numbers before coming to a handshake agreement. The
adopted budget for fiscal year 2021 will go into effect July 1,
2020.

Last year’s adopted budget for
the DCLA came in at $212 million—a record for the city.

The post Bill de Blasio’s 2021 Budget Would See a
Significant Decrease in Funding for New York’s Museums, Already Hit
Hard by the Lockdown appeared first on artnet News.