Museums alter pact

With its Japanese satellite struggling, the Museum of Fine Arts has agreed to renegotiate a 20-year contract to give the Nagoya/BMFA a better chance to succeed. The new deal, signed yesterday, reduces the fee paid to the MFA by the Foundation for the Arts, Nagoya, from $50 million to $40 million through 2019.

''The partnership . . . works very well for us, and we would do anything to make it work," said MFA director Malcolm Rogers. ''An adjustment of the terms that suited both partners is entirely appropriate. Japan has been through difficult economic times and we had to recognize that."

The MFA, which uses the Nagoya revenue for its operating budget, said it doesn't anticipate having to make any cuts in light of the $10 million fee reduction, said MFA spokeswoman Dawn Griffin.

''It still seems like a great deal for the MFA," said Richard Maloney, assistant director of Boston University's arts administration program. ''This is a lot better than if [Nagoya] backed out or collapsed."

The arrangement with Nagoya began in 1991, when the MFA agreed to lend art, advice, and its name to a new building in Japan. The museum itself opened in 1999, run by the Foundation for the Arts, Nagoya, known as FAN. The Nagoya/BMFA borrows works from the MFA. Its current exhibition, ''The Brilliance of Bird-and-Flower Painting: Gems of East Asian Art," features 134 MFA paintings, prints, and objects. In 2007 and 2008, the MFA will send works by Rembrandt, Monet, and John Singer Sargent to Japan.

In 2003, The Art Newspaper reported that the Nagoya/BMFA had an accumulated deficit of $34.8 million, and, according to the MFA, its annual attendance dropped from a first-year high of 600,000 visitors to as few as 130,000 a year. The Nagoya Foundation, which runs the Japanese museum, began negotiations with the MFA about a year ago. The MFA said it remains confident that, over the long term, the Nagoya museum will thrive.

''The relationship between Boston and Nagoya is not one of employer and employees," says Rogers. ''It's one of partners. Clearly, the new contract is the basis of our ongoing relationship for the next 10 years. This represents a wonderful way of moving ahead."

GEOFF EDGERS