Can a small museum still think big?

(Correction: Because of reporting errors, a story on small museums in Sunday's Arts & Entertainment section used an incorrect name for the Bellevue Arts Museum and said it is in Spokane. It is in Bellevue, Wash.)

Second in an occasional serieson Boston's cultural expansion.

LOWELL -- The American Textile History Museum should not be failing.

The museum's home, a renovated brick factory on Dutton Street here, is strategically positioned as a virtual gateway to the city's revived downtown. The $6 ticket price is less than half the cost of admission at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. And for that price, visitors can see a range of exhibits, from a re-creation of a weaver's shop to sprawling floors of working, century-old looms. The museum has a cafe, a shop, and plenty of parking.

But eight years after city officials gathered to celebrate the new space's opening, the museum has decided to sell its building and to reduce its hours. This summer, as tourists head to town to visit the adjacent National Historical Park and a range of other popular sites, the institution's endowment is almost drained. There will be another operating deficit. The museum needs money, and fast.

In Boston, museum leaders talk of a building boom and unprecedented fund-raising. By 2112, they hope to have raised more than $1 billion for a range of projects, from a new Institute of Contemporary Art on the waterfront to the $200 million expansion of the MFA.

The story is different on the outskirts. In Lowell, Worcester, Brockton, and other places away from the cultural core, talk of capital campaigns and million-dollar art purchases is tempered by reality. Leaky roofs need to be repaired. Tiny staffs are desperate for more help. Here, the have-nots reach out to local donors, knowing it will be hard to compete with the higher-profile Boston institutions for the biggest contributors.

And when they can't raise enough money, they contemplate extreme measures: borrowing against their endowments, moving South, closing entirely.

''While there is a sense that things are getting better, small museums are certainly seeing no evidence of that," says Kent dur Russell, director of the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester. ''Fund-raising is not increasing. The numbers of school districts able to afford tours is diminishing. The economy does not seem to be turning around for us."

This is not to say that there is no place in the increasingly blockbuster-centric cultural world for small museums, experts say. It is just that the challenges are different. So are the stakes. If a museum as big as the MFA has a down year, it can draw from reserves or cut support staff. If a small museum loses money, its very future can be at stake.

Which is why Adrian Ellis, a consultant for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's expansion project, cautions smaller museums not to get swept up in the building boom.

''The institutions that don't expand physically, that don't increase their overhead, do have certain advantages," says Ellis. ''They've got maneuverability, and they can spend more on programming."

If a museum -- big or small -- is planning a major building project, Ellis offers what he considers a key bit of advice: Raise more than construction costs. A bigger museum costs more to run.

''Not everybody's in the same place," says Ellis. ''Some institutions are very well positioned to expand, but others less so. I am not entirely convinced that the building boom [in Boston] is based on long-term viability. A lot of the stuff was conceived in the '90s, pulled back early in this century, and is now rearing its head again."

Learning by exampleNationally, a number of museum leaders advise caution when planning for the future. They know what can happen when a building proposal gathers steam before all the money's in the bank.

The Milwaukee Art Museum spent $116 million on an expansion in 2001. Three years of deficits followed. Museum leaders in Spokane, Wash., faced worse. They spent $22 million to build a new home for the Bellevue Art Museum. The building opened in 2001. It closed in 2003.

''It's pretty commonly understood that if you build a new building, you need to raise the endowment funds to build it," says C. David Robinson, a California-based architect whose projects have included the San Jose Museum of Art and Stanford University Museum of Art. ''The problem is that people don't realize how much they need."

In the case of the Bellevue Museum, which was founded in 1975, the trustees raised only $1 million for the endowment along with the $22 million for the building.

''People get excited about giving money to a new building," said Michael Monroe, who was hired last year to help the Bellevue Museum reopen. ''They don't always think of the ramifications of the long term, once the party is over."

That's a lesson in play at Worcester's Higgins Armory Museum. For years, the board has known the 78-year-old, 80,000-square-foot Art Deco building needed climate control. Museum leaders also wanted to build a working foundry outside, a carousel, a cafe, and more parking. The work would cost about $14.5 million, the board determined last year.

That's just a fraction of the money being raised in Boston, where the campaigns connected to projects at the MFA, ICA, and Gardner are expected to bring in close to $600 million.

''A wealthy person feels more validated by these large, sophisticated organizations," says Richard Maloney, assistant director of Boston University's arts administration program. ''They cultivate better, they take care of you better, they're fancier. There are more complicated reasons people give rather than that they like art."

Before launching a capital campaign, the Armory Museum hired the Wayland Group, a consulting firm in Sudbury, to interview potential donors and consider the institution's giving history.

In February, the consultants delivered a sobering message to director Russell: You won't be able to raise more than $5 million. Gone was the carousel, which was historically used by knights in training long before it became a children's ride, and the foundry, which would have featured a working blacksmith. The new plan would be stripped to its essentials. There would be repairs made on the existing building, money for the endowment, and new computers.

''It wasn't devastating," said Russell. ''It just made us think more clearly about our core needs."

The American Textile History Museum is a case study in the pitfalls of underfunded expansion.

The museum, founded in 1960 to document the region's rich history of textile manufacturing, was first housed in a 25,000-square-foot building in downtown North Andover. In 1992, the museum bought a former manufacturing building in Lowell and renovated the space -- five times the size of its original home -- for a 1997 opening. Museum leaders spared no expense, developing not only prime exhibition space but a state-of-the-art textile restoration laboratory and a climate-controlled area for dress storage.

''It's not just bigger," then-director Paul Rivard said at the time. ''It simply does not compare to what went before. We now have the biggest exhibit on this subject ever built and arguably the premier conservation lab for textiles in the country."

What Rivard didn't mention is that the museum had created something that would have a far more lasting impact: a structural deficit. The $8 million raised for the project paid for renovating the five-story building. With no money to cover the increased expenses in its new space, the museum has lost about $600,000 a year, said current director Michael J. Smith.

To survive year to year, the museum has drawn from its savings, an endowment that's fallen from $7 million to $2.8 million. It has reached the point at which Smith concedes that not even a dramatic uptick in attendance could solve his problems. About 50,000 people go to the museum each year.

''People tend to gravitate toward Boston, or Lexington, Concord, or Salem," said Smith. ''It's very hard to pull those people into Worcester or Lowell. We know we can't earn our way out of our situation with admissions. If another 40,000 people come in and pay $10, that's only another $400,000. It won't solve the problem."

Last week, Smith announced a plan to keep the museum from closing altogether. The museum's board voted to sell the Dutton Street building as long as the museum can lease back enough space from the future owners to stay open.

Squeezed in the middleFor many small, modern museums, the key to survival has been developing a specialty that sets it apart. That can be a matter of survival. The Bellevue Art Museum, for example, will reopen in June as the Bellevue Craft Museum. Its new director, Monroe, served as curator at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery for American Craft for 21 years, bringing the Bellevue instant credibility.

''What these institutions are experiencing head on is the adjustment between supply and demand," says Ellis, the Gardner consultant. ''Some of these institutions may thrive, some may go under. It's difficult but an underlying reality. And if we do see a retraction in the sector, the survivors are most likely to be of two sorts. Either the towering, premier institution or those that have very distinctive programming. The guys who get squeezed are bluntly the guys in the middle."

In Brockton, a small museum on a sprawling campus is doing everything it can to survive.

The Fuller Museum of Art opened in 1969, paid for in part by local philanthropist Myron Fuller. For years, the Fuller struggled, failing to make basic repairs to its building. Then, in 2004, the board decided to change its focus. No longer a general art museum, it is now the Fuller Craft Museum.

As part of the shift, the Fuller began selling off works that no longer met its mission, with most of the money going to buy other pieces that fit, and 20 percent of the proceeds from art sales would go to caring and storing the collection. It also meant making long-deferred building repairs and hiring a development staff. The Fuller's main challenge remained where to get the money.

''Donors don't just fall out of the woodwork in the first three months," says Diane Remin, the museum's acting development director. ''We have to build what we call the donor pyramid. It's relationship driven. And this is just a matter of time. It's planned time."

Without a new, deep-pocketed donor willing to step up, the Fuller looked to a familiar, dependable longtime supporter. Myron Fuller died in 1960, but the trust he established had continued to help support the museum. Museum leaders determined they would inevitably lose money over the next three years. But rather than let those losses symbolize failure, they recategorized them as the cost of having a startup.

The Fuller received special permission last September from the attorney general's office to borrow $1.9 million from the Fuller Trust, arguing, in part, that ''without an immediate and significant cash infusion, the Museum will not be able to continue." The money will be paid back over 10 years, starting in 2008.

So far, the results are encouraging. This year, the Fuller reported that attendance is up, from 8,743 to 10,226. So are museum shop sales, in-kind donations, and memberships. Also, all around the museum, workers are repairing the siding on the Fuller's outside walls, creating a new educational gallery, and fixing the entryway.

As she walks around the museum on a recent afternoon, director Gretchen Keyworth has even allowed herself to begin talking about a capital campaign.

''But it won't be for four to six years," she says. ''I'd like to build a school and put in artist residences. But I want to make sure that first we stabilize what we do."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.