Well supported, well attended

Five years after expansion, PEM hasn't slowed down

The atrium at the Peabody Essex was part of the museum's expansion. (Joanne Rathe / Globe Staff)

There is a myth in the world of museum fund-raising, and it goes a little like this: Donors flock to construction projects but shy away from supporting less-glamorous programs and endowment.

Dispelling that notion, Dan L. Monroe, director of the Peabody Essex Museum, points to the Salem institution's recent success.

Five years since the Peabody Essex reopened after a $125 million expansion, all is well at the museum, he says. Attendance is up, from 116,000 in 2002 - the last full year before the expansion - to 186,000 in 2007. (In 2006, thanks to the popular exhibit "Painting Summer in New England," the museum's attendance spiked to 247,000.)

The Peabody Essex's annual operating budget climbed from $13 million in 2002 to $21 million in 2007, while its staff grew from 204 employees to 276. And with 110,000 square feet added to a previous 140,000 square feet of galleries and public spaces, the museum could increase its programming: The number of annual exhibitions rose from five to 14, including such notable shows as photographer Alex MacLean's "Air Lines" in 2005, "Painting Summer" in 2006, and "Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination" last year.

Perhaps most significantly, the museum's endowment nearly doubled, growing from $74 million in 2002 to $140 million in 2007.

That figure, in particular, caught the attention of Indianapolis Museum of Art director Maxwell Anderson, who visited the Peabody Essex earlier this summer to talk with its board about measuring success. He said a museum with a healthy endowment can avoid relying on ticket-driven blockbuster shows and instead focus on what's best artistically for the institution.

"It's very impressive, and obviously it's the first bulwark against a kind of consumerist mentality," said Anderson. "The problem we find in museums today is a lot of institutions begin the conversation with what's going to draw an audience. The Peabody Essex Museum has not been doing that."

Monroe, who has led the museum since 1994, said that he used to buy into the building-campaign theory - the idea that donors typically want their money and names connected to something as tangible as a new wing or new building. The museum's expansion campaign, which brought in $195 million, seemed to confirm that logic.

But then Monroe started a quiet campaign to raise money for the museum's endowment. At $74 million in 2002, the Peabody Essex's endowment paled in comparison to the $380 million then managed by the Museum of Fine Arts, for example. And the new, post-expansion PEM would be a much more expensive place to run, with higher costs for electricity, security, insurance, maintenance, and collections care and conservation.

Monroe found a range of supporters willing to get involved.

George Putnam, 81, who led the MFA's board in the late '80s and early '90s, had largely refrained from contributing to the Peabody Essex, viewing it as a conflict with his support for the MFA. But living in Manchester, and with his wife a PEM overseer, Putnam decided to get more involved after his MFA term ended in 1995, and he particularly helped when the museum launched its endowment campaign.

"Museums have got to have a reliable source of steady income, and an endowment is the best way to get it," said Putnam. "They desperately need to have a financial base."

Putnam is one of a handful of donors who have given between $250,000 and $5 million for the new campaign and agreed to speak to the Globe on the condition that they not state the exact amount of their gifts.

For programming support, Monroe also reached out to Saluni Fadia, president of Abacus Software Group, which has an office in Burlington. Along with her late husband, Prashant, the 39-year-old Fadia has focused on sponsoring PEM programs and events connected with the Indian community. When the Peabody Essex reopened in 2003, it inaugurated the Herwitz Gallery, the first American museum gallery dedicated to modern and contemporary art of India. Fadia's gifts helped the museum reconfigure another gallery to create a new installation of traditional Indian art.

"I think that's one of the strengths of the museum, is that they've been able to garner good partnerships and figure out what people's interests are," said Fadia.

Monroe says he has been pleasantly surprised by the ease with which he's been able to raise money for non-construction needs. He notes that he always made sure to mention to prospective donors, even while immersed in the building campaign, that the Peabody Essex would need to support its endowment and programs once it opened the doors of the expanded museum.

"There's an understanding that just having more square feet doesn't make better art museums," said Monroe. "There's a real commitment and appreciation that the ongoing programs are at the heart of what art museums do."

For the endowment campaign, the museum has so far only been talking to members of its board and others with a prior relationship with the PEM. The campaign, details of which Monroe says likely won't be announced publicly until next year, could potentially call for raising more than $200 million, eclipsing the museum's previous effort.

"It wasn't that we opened the door and said, 'Gee, what do we do now?' " said John O. Parker, the museum's board chairman for almost a decade until 2005. "This has been something we've been talking about and thinking about. We knew the museum was going to be more expensive to run, we were going to have to hold more exhibitions, so we knew the need for raising funds was going to be on the table."

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