PND: Does the high profile and importance of those museums within the museum community change the conversation at all?

EA: I don't think so. At the end of the day, the same issues confront organizations and museums whether they are large, small, prominent, or not prominent. The questions are the same — particularly because many objects have limited provenance information attached to them. That's just the way it is. The good news is that museums today do a lot more work on provenance research than they used to.

PND: That must be expensive.

EA: It's extremely expensive. But the consequences of not doing that kind of work are also expensive. I look at it this way: It's part of the cost of doing business. A large portion of a museum's expenses revolves around the collection — conservation, storage, maintenance, documentation, research, and so on. Now we need to add the cost of provenance research to the equation.

PND: The provenance of items that figured prominently in the Getty and Metropolitan Museum of Arts cases has been a concern for several years. How were the museums able to hold onto those objects for so long?

EA: There was no accurate provenance or sourcing information for the objects in question. What finally brought the cases to light was the uncovering of specific information in Europe. The same situation arose recently in the case of art seized during the Nazi era and stolen works uncovered after the fall of the Soviet Union. We now have access to a lot more provenance information than we've ever had. However, there still are some in the museum community who feel they have an obligation to put a piece in the public domain when they have an opportunity to do so, even if they're not completely sure of the object's provenance. And they continue to defend that approach. I don't agree with it because, in the long run, it endangers the credibility of the institution.

PND: What will happen to the recently discovered artifacts you mentioned? Are they likely to remain in the countries where they were found?

EA: Right now, source countries for these objects, whether it's Italy, Greece, or Egypt, have enormous holdings of objects that are in need of conservation, care, research, and exhibition. But they don't have the resources to really deal with those objects, so many are stored in the condition in which they were found. The question is whether source countries will decide to share those objects with other institutions and countries on a quid pro quo basis. That appears to be the likely course of action, as suggested by recent agreements between some of the source countries and the institutions we've been talking about. But I don't think the issue has been completely settled, and I don't think source countries have adopted policies that would indicate whether there is going to be a permanent solution to the problem.

PND: What are the long-term implications for American museums?

EA: I expect the initial model will be tested and looked at by both the source countries and museums in the United States. One of the issues confronting U.S. museums is whether they have the resources — given the other financial challenges they face — to accept objects from source countries and do the work on them that would be expected as part of a quid pro quo agreement. Perhaps a handful of the larger institutions do, but how many others? And that's part of a bigger issue. Let me explain.

I see a serious resource challenge looming for American museums, and I believe it could reach crisis proportions in the not-too-distant future. There are three primary issues for museums. The first is their commitment to public service. In the last few years, American museums have recorded in excess of 850 million visits annually — and demand from the public shows no sign of falling. That's an enormous amount of public service, and it requires an equally large resource base to maintain.

Second, you have these huge collections around the country, and they are aging. Obviously, the older they get, the more conservation and direct care they'll require to ensure that they are around for future generations to enjoy, and that is going to put an additional strain on institutional resources.

And third, you have these huge physical plants that are getting older and require maintenance, which, when combined with the wear and tear of 850 million visits a year, also drains resources. And all three of these things are coming together at the same time as funding for museums and cultural institutions, both private and public, is leveling off. Throw in the expectation that American museums will accept objects from source countries on long-term loan and devote significant resources to provenance research and the conservation of those objects, and I think you're looking at a situation that is not sustainable.

PND: Can you imagine a scenario in which only the largest institutions will be able to afford to do that kind of work?

EA: Yes. Some of the larger museums with larger resource bases will be in a much better position to assume those responsibilities. However, if the final model includes provisions — with the agreement of the source country, of course — for the receiving institution to share an object with other institutions after it does the initial conservation and research work, that may well end up providing broader access to some of the objects in question, at least as far as U.S. audiences are concerned.

PND: You mentioned that all these things in combination could create a funding crisis for many institutions in the not-too-distant future. How dire is the situation?

EA: That's difficult to say. Museums are part of the larger nonprofit community and compete for resources like every other organization in the sector. It all depends on the amount of support that government, foundations, and the private sector — including individuals — are willing to give to nonprofits over the next few years. In the museum community, for example, we've seen a large drop in government support for museums as a percentage of total revenue over the past decade or two. Not so much at the federal level but at the state and local levels. Your readers might not know this, but 99 percent of public-sector funding for museums in this country comes from state and local government. That represents less than 20 percent of total museum revenues, and it includes government-owned museums. Couple that with flat funding from the foundation community and slower growth in terms of giving by individuals, and you have a situation that threatens the continued viability of many museums.

In addition, we're all aware of the decline in federal funding for human service organizations, particularly community-based ones. And we know that many of those organizations, in order to maintain their programs, are going to turn to the private sector for support and will end up competing with museums and other nonprofits for funding. Many people I know are concerned that communities have reached their carrying capacity with respect to funding museums and cultural institutions — and not just their museums and cultural institutions. Many communities have reached their carrying capacity to fund nonprofits period. What disturbs me is that the funders and the funding community — and I include foundations in this — have not come together to look at strategies that would enable them to support the aspirations of people around the globe while maintaining the viability and important work done by nonprofits in their own communities.

PND: What are some of the obstacles to adopting such a strategy?

EA: Most private funders, whether you're talking about foundations or individual philanthropists, are free agents with license to make their own decisions, independent of what others are doing. The same situation exists with state and local governments. What's missing from the picture is the sector-wide vision piece that addresses overall strategy and the question of how we work together to assure the continued viability of museums and other nonprofit organizations as enterprises. There has to be leadership. Independent Sector has begun to move significantly in this direction, but I have not yet seen the foundation community step up and address these larger strategic issues. For individual nonprofits, the larger issue is the critical importance of developing a funding strategy that includes the diversification of their funding base and the adoption of a business model appropriate to their revenues. Of course, when you're working in a dynamic environment, that can be hard to do.

PND: In the past, museums typically were viewed as elitist institutions. Has that changed?

EA: The basic message to visitors has changed. If you walked into a museum twenty-five or thirty years ago, it would not have been unusual for the staff to be less than welcoming; there would be no place to sit or amenities to make you feel comfortable or to make your visit a pleasant experience. The message you got was, "They don't want me here." If you were uneducated about that museum's particular discipline or focus and didn't understand what you are looking at, you received the same message. So there was a combination of unintentional — and I want to emphasize unintentional here — messages sent by museums that reinforced this perception of museums as elitist institutions.

Fortunately, that situation has changed dramatically over the past quarter-century. You can see it in the physical amenities provided to visitors and, more importantly, in the way objects from the collection are displayed to the public; it's become much more accessible and visitor-friendly. And that change, in turn, has fueled the dramatic increase in visits to America's museums.

PND: It has been said that a large museum's collection is like an iceberg, with much of the collection in storage or being researched and out of the public eye. Occasionally, there will be an outcry when a museum decides to sell a portion of its collection, even though the objects in question have been out of the public eye for years. What drives those types of decisions?

EA: The museum community has not done a very good job of educating the public about how museums operate. What does it mean when we "de-accession" something? That's a normal course of action for a museum that wants to refine and/or build its collection. Sometimes a major de-accession is caused by a change in an institution's collection policy. It's important to note that many of the objects that are de-accessioned will eventually re-enter the public domain in a different museum. As to the size of the collections that are in storage, that is very much on the mind of museum professionals today, and it's one of the things that has fueled the building boom in the museum community.

In addition, museums have made a commitment — without, in many cases, the resources to back it up — to digitize their collections and make them accessible anywhere in the world, whether or not an object is on exhibit or in storage. Obviously, it's much easier for an art museum to do that than a history or natural history museum, but it doesn't seem to matter; most museums are pursuing a digitization strategy. Another objective is to make sure all those objects are made available to the formal education system and are paired with text-based learning tools. That can be a powerful one-two punch. Unfortunately, there have not been a lot of funders stepping forward to help museums do that work. So, again, you have a situation within institutions where officials are struggling to come up with the resources to serve the public, care for their collections, and maintain their facilities, and then you add in collateral activities like digitization of a collection, and it starts to get a little scary.

PND: What are the chances of museums collaborating on some of these expensive ventures?

EA: I don't think museums are well prepared to do that kind of collaboration at the moment, although they are learning. For example, some are sharing conservators or conservation facilities, so every museum doesn't have to have a complete conservation lab. It's a matter of allocating resources. Often, the expertise to do digitization and apply technology involves different skills than the skills possessed by current staff, so it's not just a matter of shifting existing staff around. You have to actually find and hire people who have that expertise.

PND: How else has the role of museums in society changed over the past twenty years?

EA: There has been a steady movement, particularly in the last ten years, for museums to think of themselves as civic institutions and to try to do a better job of integrating themselves in their communities. As part of that effort, they've become more involved in helping to address different social agendas, whether it's homelessness, education reform, AIDS, and so on. There have been some wonderful examples of that. In Florida, for example, one day a uniformed policeman asked to see the director of a large art museum in a wealthy community. Well, after the director welcomed the officer — a beat cop in an economically disadvantaged, crime-ridden part of the city — into his office, the cop told the director, "In the afternoon, all the adults in my neighborhood are at work, and when kids get out of school there's nothing for them to do. There are no community facilities, not even a basketball court. Instead, they run wild, and they're making my life miserable. I heard that you have programs for kids, and I wondered if you could do something for the kids in my neighborhood."

Long story short, out of that visit grew a program between the museum and the police department in that community. Art museums call that arts education; the police referred to it as a youth-at-risk program. Whatever you call it, the role of museums today is not about doing something differently; it's about learning a different language to more accurately describe what we do. I run into that all the time with foundations when I'm out advocating for more funding for museums. A foundation head or program officer will say to me, "Ed, we don't fund culture." And I'll say, "Well, now, wait a minute. You fund youth-at-risk, education, community development." What do you think museums are about? A lot of it has to do with language.

I'll give you a second example from right here in Washington. You might not have heard about, but we had a bit of a scandal a while back when it was reported in the press that some cops in the D.C. metropolitan police department were sending offensive, bigoted e-mails to each other. In response, the department started a program with the Holocaust Museum in which uniformed policeman were dispatched on a daily basis to the museum — not to educate them, per se, but simply to spend a day in the museum, learning and absorbing what intolerance and bigotry can do.

You know, a few years ago, AAM published a small study called Museums in Community and planned to support it with a series of public forums. We were going to do fifteen cities, but by the sixth or seventh we were hearing the same thing in each city. So we went back and analyzed our research, which resulted in a book titled Civic Engagement: A Challenge for Museums that deals with the whole issue of the role of museums in building community.

PND: Has philanthropy become less important in terms of the future viability of museums? Is it more about diversifying revenue streams?

EA: Philanthropy is more important today than it's ever been, not less. The percentage of overall budgets funded by philanthropy — that is funds donated by private individuals, corporations, and foundations — is a larger percentage of total revenue than it has ever been. The percentage of revenues generated by incoming-producing activities, including museum shops, has actually remained the same, even though museums have become more professional in running their income-generating activities. And remember, even though a large museum shop can generate millions of dollars in income, that's gross, not net. Anytime you have income-producing activity, there's a cost attached to each and every dollar, so the net available to the museum for actual operations varies, depending on the type of activity.

PND: You've spoken against the movement to impose Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs) on museums. Are there circumstances in which museums paying some taxes makes sense?

EA: There may be, from time to time. But even on those rare occasions, it should be for a limited time and should include a firm agreement on a date for those payments to end. In Pittsburgh, for example, the city was about to go bankrupt, and all the nonprofits in that community had an equal stake in the city's financial viability. I actually agreed with some of the leadership in Pittsburgh that it was important for nonprofits, including foundations, museums, higher education institutions, and nonprofit healthcare institutions, to help in any way they could. But I also encouraged them to get assurances that it was a temporary situation. In most cities, I would consider it an attack on the integrity of our nonprofit community. To take resources from the nonprofit community, which almost always uses them in the most efficient and effective way, and give them to an entity that is known for its inefficiency doesn't make sense to me.

PND: Well, thanks for speaking with us, Ed.

EA: My pleasure.

PND Editor Matt Sinclair spoke with Ed Able in October. For more information on the Newsmakers series, contact PND editorial director Mitch Nauffts at mfn@foundationcenter.org.