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| Opportunities & Exposures: Art |
Creative Curators
Emily Rafferty
07/01/2005
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Like so many commercial enterprises these days, we at the Met have to think
globally; fortunately, because ours is a truly international collection (we
have, for example, the largest collection of Egyptian art outside of Cairo), we
are able to raise funds from governments, corporate sponsors and art aficionados
in Japan, India and Europe. In turn, the museum serves art lovers around with
the world by loaning works from our permanent collection—more than 5,000 each
year.
People ask me how the art world is faring today. In the past few years we have
survived various problems: 9/11, the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the
outbreak of SARS in the Far East (tourism is our currency with 42 percent of our
visitors from overseas). Today we are still not operating at pre-9/11 levels,
but we are getting close.
Working without a balanced budget will in no way deter us from acquiring new
works because we have three separate budgets: operating, construction and
acquisitions. If we know there is a piece coming up for sale and we want to have
it, we set up a special fundraising drive for that specific project. We often
find ourselves still raising money the day the item goes on the block.
Financially, we expect to be back to a balanced budget by the end of fiscal
2006. We are so upbeat about the future that we forging ahead with our
improvement programs, which currently involve new galleries for 19th-century and
Islamic art.Emily Rafferty is president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York.
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