The museum is laying off 57 staffers, while 56 take ‘voluntary early retirement’
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which has been shuttered since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is the latest arts institution to announce a round of large-scale layoffs. The museum is laying off 57 staffers, with another 56 opting for ‘voluntary early retirement.’
In a statement, the museum said that the financial impact of its extended closure had led it to ‘the difficult but necessary process of reworking our business model to accommodate our new realities – which include a reduction in our workforce’. It goes on to say that it ‘did not arrive at this decision lightly.’
Museum director Matthew Teitelbaum said in a statement: ‘This has been an extremely painful process […] Faced with the challenges of a significantly changed financial environment, we made this difficult decision based on the need to create stability and sustainability for the MFA – an institution that means so much to so many.’
MFA Boston joins many other museums across the US – including the New Museum, Guggenheim and Whitney in New York, the Broad Museum in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art – and beyond, which have instituted brutal cutbacks, furloughs and layoffs to counter the loss of revenue during the pandemic.
