Columnists
Cultural icons struggling after 9/11
> BY PREETI DAWRA
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved

In the months since the terror attack on the World Trade Center, the Met suffered a significant drop in attendance, plummetng revenues and large budget deficits due to a cut in the city's budget. McKinney's job is to ensure that the museum is restored to its old vitality and continues to flourish as a beacon of light in the Big Apple.

"This has been the most difficult period for us in the last decade," said McKinney, sitting in his expansive office in the Met overlooking Central Park. "After Sept. 11, the number of visitors to the city's museums dropped by approximately 60 percent. People who had to fly here did not come. People from different boroughs did not come, and schoolchildren did not visit us either."

Although McKinney admits that the job is not easy, he is confident that the present crisis can be overcome. He has a strategic plan to put the Met back on course; a plan that encompasses everything from lobbying to marketing, pricing and new partnerships.

McKinney took this job in February 1999 several years after retiring as the president of IBM Europe. Within two years of taking the new job, McKinney started to face some big challenges. The economy started to slide into recession, and then Sept. 11 pushed it into a deep hole.

Which is not to say that he is not well prepared to handle the challenge. He has more than three decades of experience in strategic planning, international relations and technology at IBM. He also served as Executive Assistant to the chairman of IBM and was a member of the company's corporate management board. McKinney also has some experience in the nonprofit sector. He has been a trustee of Brown University since 1989 and a director of the New York Philharmonic since 1992.

When he retired from IBM, McKinney says, he was not thinking about taking another full-time job. But when he was invited to take over the Met presidency, he was pleasantly surprised. "They weren't looking for someone with an art history background, but with a sound understanding of running a business," he said. "I guess I fit that role.

"It is different from the private sector in a sense. There almost everyone is concentrating on financial targets, shareholder value. Here, the focus is on qualitative objectives: building support for our mission, which is displaying and conserving art and educating the New York public."

But McKinney's biggest and most pressing challenge remains making the Met a must-see destination for local and international tourists after Sept. 11. While attendance has slowly started to recover, McKinney is quick to point out that it has "only eased back, not bounced back" and is nowhere close to optimal. Last year more than five million people visited the Met from all over the globe. This year attendance is down by 400,000 people for the same period between October and March, a 20 percent decline, and that is making McKinney and his team nervous.

The revenue picture also looks dismal. That is because a large part of the current attendance comes from local people, who tend to spend less museum's gift shops and cafés To make things worse, the Met has also been adversely affected by the city's decision to slash its budget for cultural institutions as it redirects resources toward the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan and the city's financial industry.

The Met has always enjoyed a very special relationship with the city. For more than a century, the trustees and the City of New York have been partners. The museum buildings in Central Park are the property of the city, which provides for the its heat, light and power and contributes to the cost of maintenance and security. After Sept. 11 there is an incresing need for the two to work together. McKinney's job includes marketing the Met to the city and its leaders. He has spent a lot of time meeting new members of the City Council. "We are taking the story of the Met to them with the hope that they will have a better understanding of what we are facing," he said.

McKinney also works closely with the Department of Cultural Affairs, which acts as a liaison between the mayor's office and the city's cultural institutions. The department oversees a $110 million budget that is directed primarily toward 34 cultural institutions like the Met.

The Met is presently severely hurt by a cut in the city's budget. "In 1994 we started a long-term renovation plan called 'Fund for the Met,' with the goal of raising $650 million for the renovation of many galleries and improving public space," he said. The museum has so far raised $530 million and has pledges of another $60 million. The city gave $20.7 million to this fund between 1997 and 2001 but is now looking to slash 25 percent over the next five years or at least delay payments on its original allocation of $50 million.

The city's operating budget for the museum, approximately $21 million, has also been slashed. "After Sept. 11 they cut the fiscal 2002 budget by about 14 percent," said McKinney. "We are hearing from the mayor's office that we should expect another major cut of about 15 percent for the 2003 operating budget," he added. So how are McKinney and his team planning to cope with such a darkening picture for the arts? "We are doing a very careful review and cutting expenses where we can," he said. "We have also slowed hiring and are not filling some open positions."

In addition, the Museum has initiated major marketing efforts press conferences in cities like Paris and London to reach out to tourists through visitation bureaus. This outreach to the international market is important because international visitors spend far more per capita than local people. Most of the Met's international visitors come from Germany, Japan, France, Brazil and Canada.

A strong partnership between the museum and NYC and Company, the city's tourism promotion agency, is also under way to work with travel agencies and hotels for special packages to attract visitors to the city.

McKinney's efforts have paid off to some extent. With the decline in attendance, retail revenue and the reduced city budget, the Met had been looking at a projected $20 million revenue shortfall as recently as November.

"But we found $8.5 million of expense cuts, which we have put into place, and now the projections are looking somewhat better," McKinne

Despite the formidable challenges, McKinney remains optimistic about the city's future.

"New York City is a tourist magnet," said McKinney. "I don't see that changing. Things like the Met and the Museum of Natural History, the baseball teams, the Statue of Liberty are the reason why people come to New York. All of us are working together to draw people back and keep New York safe, clean and attractive. I have faith that we will eventually bounce back."