The last two years haven’t been easy on New York museums, but they’ve been particularly challenging for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. In a disastrous 2008, the museum’s net assets declined by 25 percent.
The latest tax filings show that 2009 was not nearly as bad, though the numbers still offer cause for concern. Despite a round of layoffs (completed midyear), expenses exceeded revenue by more than $12 million. Contributions were down from the previous year, to $20 million. The foundation’s endowment decreased slightly, to $62.5 million from $64.4 million.
A Guggenheim spokeswoman, Betsy Ennis, said that the foundation expected the endowment to finish 2010 slightly higher. (The foundation includes the museum on Fifth Avenue and its satellites abroad.)
Richard Armstrong, the new director of the Guggenheim, made $612,550 in 2009 — roughly comparable to the pay for his colleagues at other major museums around the city. The exception was Glenn Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art, who took home twice that amount between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009 (the period that that museum uses as its fiscal year).
Mr. Armstrong’s salary was lower than the $1 million the Guggenheim paid its former director, Thomas Krens, last year, as the second installment of a $2 million severance package. The Guggenheim also paid $816,295 in fees to the company that Mr. Krens started after leaving the Guggenheim, Global Cultural Asset Management, which was consulting on the planned new Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi.
The tax filings show that the Guggenheim received $715,000 in 2009 for doing a feasibility study, jointly with the State Hermitage Museum, for a possible museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Because of the economic crisis and turnover in the local government, that museum has not gone forward.
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