For those who may have not been aware or able to follow the current crisis
at Milwaukee Public Museum -

Museum board OKs $7 million in cuts
Directors also offer support for president
By DAVE UMHOEFER
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Posted: May 18, 2005

The Milwaukee Public Museum's board of directors Wednesday authorized
slashing the struggling institution's core budget from $20 million to $13
million to rein in burgeoning losses and stave off future financial crises.
Board members also voted to hire auditors and non-profit experts to
investigate the sudden near-collapse of the natural history museum after a
record-breaking attendance year.
Museum President Michael Stafford won a vote of confidence from the board
in the form of a resolution read by board Chairman David Meissner but not
formally voted upon. Meissner asked if the board's consensus was to back
Stafford, and no member spoke up in dissent.
"The MPM board expresses its complete confidence in the leadership of
Michael Stafford, president and CEO, in assisting the board in getting to
the bottom of the problems facing the institution and leading the museum
into a strong future," the resolution as read by Meissner said.
County Supervisor Lynne DeBruin, a museum board member, said donors and
many museum employees had expressed support for Stafford. The board "felt
very strongly that donors and creditors needed to know that there is a
credible person leading us at this time."
After the emergency board meeting, Stafford huddled with top museum
managers to prepare a specific list of staff cuts in response to a 50%
payroll reduction recommended by an investment banking firm, Starshak
Welnhofer. The museum's lenders pushed for expense cuts when the museum's
cash reserve dipped so low that it could not meet payroll this week without
emergency aid from the county in the form of an advance on its quarterly
taxpayer contribution.
The financial crisis is far from over.
The county boost gives the museum breathing room for a few weeks, but the
institution still needs at least $3 million in new support soon to stay
above water, Stafford said after the board meeting. He's looking to help
from donors, the county and the museum's lenders.
The Starshak firm has recommended that 119 employees be terminated, with
layoff notices as soon as this week, leaving 126 on staff. The board urged
museum managers to use the Starshak plan as a starting point; Stafford said
he and his staff would decide, in consultation with union officials, on
specific layoffs.
Stafford said he hoped to ease the heaviest recommended cut, in the
collections and research staff.
An official with American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees District Council 48, Penni Secore, told the board that the union
was willing to cooperate in finding savings and minimize job losses, but
not without more information and some assurances.
"We will not do concessions to save a vice president's job," Secore said.
Employees on the firing line point out that the museum has doubled the
number of vice presidents - from four to eight - in recent years as the
institution's budget boomed.
Secore questioned how the museum would pull in grants if it eliminates the
bulk of the facility's researchers.
Stafford, whose salary is $185,000, said after the meeting that he was
willing to take a substantial pay cut himself, and he hoped his vice
presidents would follow his lead.
"I'm absolutely giving up pay," Stafford said.
Stafford appeared to back off somewhat from his comments last week that the
museum would evolve into a "science center" that concentrates on public
displays, along the lines of Discovery World, which is currently housed in
the public museum center downtown.
"We'll still be a museum," Stafford said. But the science center financial
approach of all programs paying for themselves will be a reality, he said.
The museum's 2004 budget, boosted by one-time expenses associated with the
Egyptian "Quest for Immortality" exhibit last summer, topped $26 million
and wound up in the red. The fiscal-year 2005 budget, scaled down to $22
million to start, is deep in trouble, with a $7 million hole projected by
the end of August. The museum, struggling to stay afloat, had spent its
unrestricted cash reserves down to $94,000 by Sunday.
The $13 million "core" budget endorsed by the board excludes items such as
one-time grants and special exhibition costs.
Milwaukee County was poised to guarantee a 10-year annual cash
contribution, capital improvements help and backing of museum debt in a new
lease-management agreement. The deal could have lasted a total of 20 years.
The county owns the facility and most of the exhibits while the private,
non-profit museum corporation manages it.
The revelations about runaway museum deficits prompted county officials to
put the deal on the shelf.

Museum staff, peers defend jobs
Exhibits could wither, they say
By SUSANNE QUICK and LARRY SANDLER
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Posted: May 19, 2005

Curators and directors from other museums warn that if the Milwaukee Public
Museum slashes its collections and research staff, the museum at best will
stagnate, and at worst, die.
"Research and collections staff are vitally important to natural history
institutions," said Bill Stanley, collections manager for the division of
mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago. "Without those people, the
storytellers (of the museum) are removed," and the museum begins to decline.
On Thursday, several Milwaukee museum staffers presented their case to the
County Board's Finance and Audit Committee, arguing that massive job losses
in this department would endanger the museum's collection - a collection
that belongs to the people of Milwaukee - and its integrity.
"Each of the 6.2 million exhibits housed in the museum, and the 150,000
square feet of exhibits on display for our visitors, require the care of an
expert," according to a letter written by the collections, research and
exhibits staff and read by Martha Chaiklin, curator of Asian
history. "Collections that languish in storage without professional
attention will deteriorate, while those on exhibit will deteriorate even
faster from visitor traffic and less hospitable conditions."
Peter Sheehan, head of the museum's geology department, said that the
scientific expertise provided by the department is needed to maintain
exhibits and keep them accurate.
For example, the museum's prized butterfly exhibit could be destroyed if
infested by other insects, and something as simple as installing the wrong
bulb could ruin a priceless mummy, Sheehan said.
Gary Casper, the museum's herpetology and ichthyology collections manager,
said he had returned late Wednesday night from Isle Royale, Mich., his
trunk filled with amphibian, reptile and fish specimens. Now, Casper said,
he's looking at the prospect that his 20-year career at the museum could be
ended on two weeks' notice with a pink slip on Monday. He said he didn't
know how he could put these new specimens in order to hand over to another
curator in just two weeks.
But keeping up and maintaining the collection is just one of the things
collections and research staff do, said Michael Hager, executive director
of the San Diego Natural History Museum, in a telephone interview.
"You can manage collections without huge numbers of people," he said. "But
you're just treading water at that point."
The collections at most natural history museums, he said, are provided by
the people doing the research. The older collections are consistently
updated, making them "relevant to the needs of society," he said.
For example, Chaiklin said that when she first came to the museum, an
exhibit on the Ainu people of Japan had a card describing them as
the "Hairy Hunters of the North." Using her expertise on Japanese history
and culture, and artifacts and objects from the museum's collections, she
gutted the display - modernizing it for 21st-century visitors.
"If you take us away, it's no longer a museum," she said. "A museum is not
just a building. It is a place filled with people who foster an educational
mission," based on their research.
"This is what we do," she said. "We bring research - something abstract -
and tie it in to the things that people see downstairs."
But Allen Young, curator of zoology and vice president of academic affairs
at the museum, said that while research is part of what natural history
museums do, the degree to which they do that varies from one institute to
the next. The importance of research within an institute goes in cycles.
"A lot of museums have had cuts. This does happen to museums," Young said.
Museum President Michael Stafford said the museum won't cut the curatorial,
research and exhibits staffs as deeply as the Chicago consulting firm of
Starshak Welnhofer & Co. recommended - 28 of the 35 employees.
Staff members are still expecting a big hit. And many aren't optimistic.
"It's not like there are 900 jobs in the city of Milwaukee for people who
study the Dutch East India Company in Japan," Chaiklin said.
A final plan will be drawn up by sundown today and discussed with union
representatives over the weekend before layoff notices go out early next
week, Stafford said.
"That Starshak report was done by business consultants who don't know
museums," Stafford said

Museum chief's dedication at issue
Critics say he hasn't given job, crisis sufficient attention
By AVRUM D. LANK and DAVE UMHOEFER
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Posted: May 21, 2005

Milwaukee Public Museum President Michael Stafford left for a 10-day scuba-
diving vacation on a remote Caribbean island April 25 while the
institution's financial crisis deepened, massive layoffs loomed and
consultants scrutinized its books.
Even after initial media reports surfaced of staggering deficits that
threaten to blow up the museum's pending - and badly needed - financial-aid
package with Milwaukee County, Stafford remained on the world-class diving
destination of Bonaire off the Venezuelan coast.
And for Stafford's first seven months as president, into the summer of
2004, he was allowed to work a four-day schedule in Milwaukee, stay in a
$1,500-a-month Prospect Ave. apartment and fly home to Michigan at museum
expense. He flew in Monday or Tuesday and left on Thursday or Friday. He
has since purchased a home in Mequon.
Stafford was hired chiefly for his fund-raising skills and is paid $185,000
a year. Shortly after his arrival, he brought on a fund-raising executive
who also commuted from Michigan, never moved to Milwaukee and left for
personal reasons after six months on the job. They were associates at the
Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., when Stafford
was director there.
Stafford has cited a drop-off in private fund raising as one of the reasons
for the museum's financial crisis, which could cost the century-old,
nationally respected natural history facility half of its employees, and
most of its curators.
Critics, including former museum chief operating and financial officer
Terry Gaouette, have questioned the effectiveness of having two out-of-town
officials leading the institution's critical fund-raising efforts.
"We had a part-time president," said Randy Mooi, former curator of
ichthyology (fishes) at the Milwaukee museum and now curator of zoology at
Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg, Canada.
Mooi left in September 2004, 10 months after Stafford began work as
president.
In other developments in the museum's struggle for survival:
• Key museum board members were told by Stafford of the dramatic nature of
the crisis on March 11 - six days before the County Board, apparently
unaware of the problem, approved a 20-year lease extension potentially
worth $70 million in taxpayer funds, plus loan guarantees. That agreement
was approved but awaiting final signatures when the museum's deficit was
revealed by Stafford to the Journal Sentinel.
• The museum's cash crunch has delayed payment of $50,000 to the Riveredge
Nature Center near Newburg as part of a deal that gave the museum control
of a research center in Costa Rica.
Stafford's 10-day island vacation came less than two weeks after Gaouette
had resigned. Two days before Gaouette's departure, on April 13, a Chicago
consulting firm, hired by the museum at the behest of concerned lenders,
began to review the museum's books in an effort to understand its fast-
disappearing cash reserves.
The result was a preliminary plan, made public last week, recommending
layoffs of 119 of the institution's 245-member staff. More definitive word
on layoffs is expected early this week.
The museum is county-owned but since 1992 has been privately managed by a
non-profit corporation. That organization, of which Stafford is president,
raises most of its money privately but receives more than $3 million a year
in public funds from the county.
Justification of trip
Stafford said he went to Bonaire as planned because he needed a stress-
relieving getaway and stayed in touch with his office via phone and e-mail.
He first disclosed the institution's deficit to a reporter in a phone call
from the island on May 3, without mentioning that he was on vacation.
"I was completely accessible," Stafford said. "It was a much-needed break."
Said David Meissner, chairman of the museum's board:
"I don't feel like anything was lost by his lack of physical presence. It
was good for him and it was good for his health. . . . Nobody complained
about lack of information from Mike."
Meissner also is a director of Journal Communications Inc., parent of the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
As for Stafford working on a four-day Milwaukee schedule when he was first
hired, Thomas Frenn, a longtime museum board member and Milwaukee lawyer,
said:
"When we hired him, he had young children in school so he did not want to
move until the school year ended. He put his family first. I don't think it
affected him at all because when he was here, he was working 13 hours a
day. I got at least two phone calls from him at 9 o'clock at night."
Stafford could arrive in Milwaukee as early as 8:20 a.m. and leave for
Flint, Mich., as late as 6:15 p.m. on weekdays to make the approximately
one-hour, non-stop flight, according to records at Midwest Connect
Airlines, which serves the route.
Stafford said: "I busted my ass during that period."
While Gaouette and Stafford made a joint presentation to county officials
to explain the crisis after it became public, they have since engaged in an
increasingly public struggle to pin blame.
Notice provided
Gaouette said he provided officials, including Stafford, with all the
information they needed in a timely manner to see that the crisis was
coming.
A lifelong Milwaukeean who graduated from Marquette University, Gaouette
said that he is not a fund-raiser. He said he left the museum to pursue a
doctorate and that his departure was long planned. He received a $28,000
severance package and agreed to provide volunteer financial advice to the
museum until December.
However, Stafford said that while he did receive monthly financial
statements, Gaouette never made clear the magnitude of the situation.
Stafford said he trusted Gaouette to take care of financial matters.
"I don't dispute that the buck stops on my desk," Stafford said. "I trusted
him. I don't know what else to tell you."
The museum's second-in-command in finance, controller Linda O'Hanison, said
that Stafford "should have been sophisticated enough to handle the
information given to him at that level."
She said Gaouette had been unfairly scapegoated. "The truth will come out
in the audit (being conducted by the county). We've done the right and
proper things at all times."
She said no money had been improperly transferred from internal accounts.
Gaouette said that in prior years, some technical accounting changes had
been made that allowed the museum easier access to cash from donations.
"We didn't hire him to be a financial man," Meissner said of Stafford.
Instead, the Michigan native was selected because of his strengths as a
fund-raiser, Meissner said.
The museum board is mostly a fund-raising organization and is little
concerned with governance of the museum's operations, said Frenn.
"I felt there was too little oversight," Frenn said.
According to board minutes, getting a quorum occasionally was difficult,
and often less than two-thirds of its 27 members attended the six or so
meetings a year.
Meissner noted that it was difficult for some members to attend meetings
during the workday.
"I think the board was doing as much as it probably could do given that it
is a voluntary board representing various interests," he said. "When they
are there, they work."
Minutes of the crucial March 11 meeting of the board's Executive Committee
contain no description of its topic. But Gaouette and a second museum
source said the budget crisis, and the banks' concerns, were outlined in
detail by Stafford and Gaouette.
Stafford declined comment on the meeting.
County supervisors and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker have
complained that the museum misled the county about its financial condition
during lease negotiations. The new lease is in limbo, but the museum
continues to receive payments from the county under the old lease. An
advance on the July payment allowed the museum to meet payroll last week.
The financial pressure has also been apparent in other areas, including the
Tirimbina Rainforest Center in Costa Rica. The museum and the Riveredge
Nature Center jointly bought the tropical nature preserve in the mid-1990s
to complement their educational and scientific missions, both of which
stress the link between global and local biodiversity, conservation and
ecology.
The museum took over Tirimbina's operation last year under an arrangement
in which it was to provide a $100,000 educational fund to Riveredge. So
far, only $50,000 has been paid, according to Meissner, Stafford and Rick
Flood, executive director of Riveredge.
The money "wasn't available," Meissner said. "I am on the Tirimbina board,
so I wear two hats. That is an obligation the museum has."
Because of the Costa Rica deal, the museum was able to add about $700,000
in assets to its consolidated balance sheet in its 2004 fiscal year, which
ended Aug. 31. That decreased its reported loss of net assets for the year
to $4.1 million.
Susanne Quick and Steve Schultze of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed
to this report.

Do we really want to gut our museum?
Gutting the museum will have long-term implications
By MARTHA CHAIKLIN
Last Updated: May 21, 2005

Why is a museum different from an antique store, a hunting lodge or a walk-
in closet?
A museum is a public resource, not a private, profit-driven enterprise, an
ego-boosting trophy room or a storage facility.
The word "museum" comes from the Greek for "shrine of the muses" and is
thus dedicated to the nine daughters of Zeus who each presided over an art
or science.
Even the earliest American museums were founded on this principle. Charles
Wilson Peale established the Philadelphia Peale Museum in 1786 for
the "collection, arrangement and preservation of the objects of natural
history and things useful and curious." George Washington and Lewis and
Clark were among his donors.
The Smithsonian Institution began with a bequest by Charles Smithson "for
the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Even P.T. Barnum,
the "Shakespeare of advertising," "the prince of humbugs," sought to do
some public good with natural history exhibits and temperance activities
alongside Tom Thumb and the fraudulent "Fejee Mermaid" in the American
Museum he opened in New York in 1841.
The Milwaukee Public Museum was not just an imitator but one of the
originators of cutting-edge scientific study displayed to the public,
beginning with the collections of the German-English Academy founded by
Peter Engelmann in 1851.
From the development of the museum diorama under Carl Akeley to loans of
collections to schools, the Milwaukee Public Museum has led the way in
creating new, inventive and better ways to help visitors learn about the
world.
As a result, a few things have changed since the days of Peale and Barnum.
Even the simplest exhibit of the quality that Milwaukee Public Museum
visitors expect is a team effort by highly trained professionals.
Curators develop a concept, select objects and graphics and write labels
that are concise and informative. Conservators evaluate each object,
assessing whether it can withstand the hot lights and climactic conditions
of an exhibit case, and provide treatments to prevent deterioration.
Graphic artists produce labels and visuals, and exhibit designers create
the look of the case with the assistance of painters and carpenters.
The very best exhibits at the Milwaukee Public Museum are the best because
they consist of both a solid intellectual grounding based on original
research and extraordinary displays by talented artists and skilled
craftsman.
The life of a museum professional is not just about exhibits. Each one is
an educational resource for the community.
The Milwaukee Public Museum is one of the few major institutions that
provides contact information for each research staff member online so
students can call with history or natural science questions and rummage-
sale aficionados can find out if they have treasure or trash.
Curators give tours and lecture at colleges, schools and events. They
oversee the content of the curriculum and programming of the education
department. They write grants to support all of these functions.
Alongside interns and researchers from universities and museums from around
the world, museum studies students from the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee are taught by the Milwaukee Public Museum staff.
Collections care is also, even according to the dictionary, a defining part
of what a museum does.
Exhibit professionals, maintenance staff and security personnel ensure that
the objects on exhibit are kept clean and safe, while curators and
conservators look after those in storage.
Decisions are made about what is added to the collections and those
additions must all be cataloged.
When objects are put on exhibit or loaned, they must be researched so that
all information is accurate, up-to-date and based on the latest research.
Over the past days, the financial woes of the Milwaukee Public Museum have
been publicly chronicled. How this came about will undoubtedly be
chronicled in future coverage.
(The museum has reported that it faces multimillion-dollar deficits for the
fiscal year that ended Aug. 31 and the current fiscal year. Consultants
have drawn up a turnaround plan that calls for cutting 119 of 245 museum
jobs, although administrators said they will try to save more jobs before
layoff notices go out this week.)
As drastic measures are taken to save the museum, a hard look should be
taken at what will be left.
A museum is not a building; it is a living body of people who preserve the
world of each generation for the edification of those of the future.
The Milwaukee Public Museum is an integral part of the cultural fabric of
not just Milwaukee, but the entire state of Wisconsin.
Current proposals to effectively eliminate nearly all research, collections
and exhibits positions are a stake in the heart of the museum as we know
it.
They will not save the museum, but will leave only a hollow stone shell not
even worthy of the Fejee Mermaid in its stead.
Humbug.
Martha Chaiklin is the curator of Asian history at the Milwaukee Public
Museum

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