Now is a good time to cut your expenses.  Now is not a good time to cut your gallery budgets.

Cut your operating expenses.  A lot.  Ruthlessly.  I get it.  Streamlining is evolutionary.  But that’s the easy half.  You can cut and you can cut, but you can’t cut your way out of nobody-wants-to-come-here-because-it’s-boring.  Cutting does not lead to that destination.  What are you saving money for?  It’s a question worth pondering.  You can bail and bail, but if you don’t also paddle, you’re still going to sink.

Now is not the time for modest half-measures in your galleries.  Maybe just keeping your head down and your chinstrap fastened is all it will take for your endowment to eventually rebound.  But take a closer, more honest look at your pie charts.  Attendance declines were trending well ahead of the economy.  Don’t overly conflate the two.  Have you ever been to a penny arcade?  No, you haven’t.  Why?  There aren’t any more penny arcades.  (At the height of their game they were cooler than you.)  Time may be on your endowment’s side, but time is not on your side. Three more milquetoast business-as-usual 1990s hands-on interactive galleries from the same three business-as-usual 1990s hands-on interactive companies could be fatal. You have two crises to manage.  Don’t let the big one slip.

Philanthropy still exists.  But when there are more ideas competing for fewer dollars, it isn’t the cheaper ideas that win.  The better ideas still win.  Just fewer of them.  You’ll have a better time getting $2,500,000 for your bold, innovative idea than you will getting $250,000 for your mediocre one.  And it’s a lot less humiliating to ask for.  Let the financial timidity of rival projects be to your advantage.