Museum cuts staff and budget

(File photo: David L. Ryan/Globe staff)

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will cut 12 jobs, or 9 percent, of its 140-person workforce, despite a significant increase in visitors this year, museum officials said today.

Director Anne Hawley said the layoffs were necessary after the value of the museum's endowment plunged 29 percent between July 2008 and February 2009. The endowment pays for 40 percent of the museum's operations, with additional funding coming through fund-raising donations.

"There will be no changes to admission prices, hours of operation, or major programming," Hawley said in a statement yesterday. "Our lively artistic programming is one of the main reasons that the museum continues to thrive."

The museum, which is modeled after a Venetian palace, has been in the process of raising more than $100 million to fund its first major expansion. The Gardner has hired Italian architect Renzo Piano to create a multistory building on the museum's Fenway site that would be connected to the ornate building that Gardner, a Boston socialite, designed.

Workers in the museum's administrative, development, conservation and curatorial staff have been eliminated, museum officials said. The museum's fiscal 2010 operating budget has also been reduced by 11 percent to $10.4 million.
(By Megan Woolhouse, Globe staff)