Posted on 04/21/2005 5:55:30 AM PDT by finnsheep
LOWELL -- Last year when Cindy Kryston called city cultural leaders together to discuss Lowell National Historical Park's financial distress, she got a lot of support from Mike Smith.
Smith, American Textile History Museum president, told Kryston, the national park's acting superintendent at the time, the park wasn't alone as it battled decreasing visitation, reduced funding and budget deficits.
He wasn't kidding.
Smith is in the fight of his 34-year professional life to keep the museum solvent, and, hopefully, in Lowell.
The museum currently has a $600,000 operating deficit.
Its budget has been reduced from about $2.5 million in 1997 -- when the museum moved from North Andover to its current location on Dutton Street -- to about $2.2 million today.
Today, the museum employs 37, down from 45 just a few years ago.
Its once annual $75,000 advertising and marketing effort no longer exists.
“We're facing a challenge, no doubt about it,” Smith said in an interview in the museum's Gazebo Cafe.
The museum's board of directors will meet on May 20 and consider several options developed by its strategic planning committee. Among them are:
* Moving the entire operation to either Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. and affiliating with a major textile history museum in one of those cities.
* Temporarily closing the museum until financial issues are resolved.
* Using a portion of the museum's 161,000-square-feet in a for-profit capacity. Smith declined to elaborate, but said the museum has about 35,000-square-feet that could be used for such a purpose.
Smith pointed to two factors that are hurting the museum.
* In 2002, the museum served 71,200 customers either at the museum, in school programs or other forms of community outreach. In 2004, that number dropped to 45,000.
* Government and foundation funding has been significantly reduced.
The museum isn't unique in terms of museums with financial issues, Smith said. According to a monthly industry report published by the Museum of Science in Boston, 61 museums and other tourist attractions throughout Eastern Massachusetts have reported reduced visitation every year since 1999.
There are some positive indicators, too. The museum owns its building. Plus, it has a $3 million endowment.
But ever since the museum moved to the former Kitson Machine Shop, visitation has been an issue.
Its president at the time, Paul Rivard, struggled with ways to boost visits.
Eventually, the museum chose to institute revolving exhibits to complement its massive collection of textile machines, coverlets (bedspreaads) and millions of textile samples. The first exhibit featured gowns worn by the late Princess Diana in an exhibit called “Dresses for Humanity,” whose cause was helping to rid the world of landmines while assisting victims.
But even the exhibits haven't been enough to drive the museum into the black.
Revolving exhibits are indeed the trend in the industry, said Smith, the president since 2000. But many museums are showing several exhibits at once -- which the textile history museum can't do.
In terms of what the trustees do on May 20, Smith said: “I'll make a recommendation. But I have no recommendation -- yet.”
Christopher Scott's e-mail address is cscott@lowellsun.com.
Sounds like a plan! At $10 a square foot it would make a big dent in any shortfall.
so nobody wants to see it. why should the government take money from taxpayers for something the taxpayers don't want or need? if it closes, it closes.
Maybe if the street signs in Lowell weren't in Mongolian people would be able to find it.
Maybe if the street signs in Lowell weren't in Mongolian people would be able to find it.
> At $10 a square foot it would make a big dent in any shortfall.
Maybe they could rent out the space to...a mill :)
Seriously, the Textile Museum needs to get the word out...by linking up w/ other historical and national park web sites. That's not too expensive. Boston is a tourist mecca, but the turistas only know the biggies...the Freedom Trail and Old Ironsides, and outlying Concord, Sturbridge Village and Plimouth Plantation. Who ever heard of Lowell?
Ah, Marblehead. One of the four Massachusetts towns named for Endicott Peabody.
Mongolian or Cambodian. Sadly there are people reading this that think we are kidding.
Isn't one of them Rockport?
;)
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