Among the many museum administrators paying eager consideration to the ruling, on 3 December, that each one federal grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Companies (IMLS) can be reinstated, the director of the Seattle Artwork Museum Scott Stulen heaved a sigh of reduction. In 2025, the Pacific Northwest’s main artwork museum noticed all its federal funding minimize. That represented the lack of an annual revenue stream, he says, of between $300,000 and $400,000.
Stulen’s museum has an annual working price range of $42m, so the federal funding cuts weren’t life-threatening. However, as he places it, they did harm. “We crammed holes as we may, with the hope that we might get reimbursed sooner or later.”
That hope seems to have been well-founded, however wider financial uncertainty and shifts in customer—and donor—patterns are rising issues. Of the 511 museum administrators the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) surveyed in its Nationwide Snapshot of United States Museums, printed in November, one in 4 mentioned their backside strains have been weaker than in 2019. Federal funding accounts for simply 3% of common museum revenue. The bigger components contributing to administrators’ unease are the affect of the affordability disaster and the place audiences are selecting to spend their {dollars}—whether or not as guests or donors.
Attendance drop
Over 50% of the AAM survey’s respondents reported fewer guests than in 2019 and 29% reported “declines tied to weakened journey and tourism and/or financial uncertainty”. This, after all, varies massively from state to state.
For museums whose attendance has at all times tracked extra native than nationwide or international, issues are trying good. The Toledo Museum of Artwork’s director and chief govt Adam Levine says attendance is now 50% greater than instantly after lockdown, and exceeding pre-pandemic ranges. “The caveat is that we’re a free museum,” he says. Earlier than Covid-19, attendance was measured within the combination, whether or not somebody had come to see the artwork indoors or to stroll their canine within the sculpture backyard. Since lockdown, the museum has counted in a extra granular means, so that fifty% enhance pertains particularly to gallery visitation.
Attendance on the Artwork Institute of Chicago (AIC) can also be 13% greater 12 months on 12 months, although it’s nonetheless lagging by 7% in contrast with earlier than the pandemic. The museum’s president and director James Rondeau ascribes this “virtually solely” to sluggish restoration of worldwide visitation. “Regardless of slower worldwide tourism, these declines have been offset by important development in home tourism,” he says, “which has recovered in full, in addition to essential beneficial properties in native Chicago attendance. Paid native attendance is definitely greater than it was pre-pandemic.”
In Seattle, in the meantime, the place companies throughout the board are bearing the brunt of the continued Canadian pullback in US journey, with numbers down by 50%, in response to Stulen the museum’s attendance is definitely again as much as 2019 ranges, despite the fact that vacationer numbers account for 15% of the Seattle Artwork Museum’s total attendance.
So, too, in New York. In early December, customer numbers on the Museum of the Transferring Picture for 2025 have been heading in the right direction to exceed 2019 complete visits, regardless of the downturn in worldwide tourism to town. “Essentially the most important development has come from native and regional guests, reflecting a strategic deal with broader New York-area communities slightly than on longhaul worldwide vacationers,” says Aziz Isham, the museum’s director.
Spending slowdown
Patchy attendance, the AAM’s report reveals, is compounded by rising monetary pressure. Practically one third of respondents cited downturns ensuing from much less journey and tourism, in addition to “financial uncertainty”. These dynamics affect museums in two methods.
First, museums throughout the nation underscore the urgency of rising operational expenditures. Stulen, who sits on the board of the Affiliation of Artwork Museum Administrators, says labour prices are up by 20%, constructing supplies by 15% and transport by as a lot as 30%. The expense of doing enterprise has many establishments “treading water”, he says.
Second, people are being impacted by the affordability disaster simply as a lot as establishments are. As a free museum, the Up to date Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) doesn’t depend on customer numbers when it comes to ticket gross sales, although attendance does have an effect on grant alternatives. In 2025, CAMH was considered one of many museums to see its Nationwide Endowment for the Arts funding minimize. Amid the whiplash, Melissa McDonnell-Luján, who’s CAMH’s co-director with Ryan Dennis, says they thought the federal funding cuts would possibly spur an uptick in particular person philanthropy or membership, however that has not occurred. “That’s been a shock,” she says.
Stulen factors to adjustments in how guests are selecting to spend their cash. “We’re seeing it on the decrease revenue ranges,” he says. “Individuals are approaching free days, and perhaps not coming as ceaselessly as they have been earlier than.”
The info bears this out, in response to Joanne Hsu, an economist who heads up the College of Michigan’s Surveys of Shoppers, carried out since 1946. In early December, 47% of shoppers mentioned excessive costs are weighing down their private funds, a determine Hsu describes as “actually excessive”. She says extra individuals are slicing again on expenditure, or stopping it altogether, than in 2022.
The price of residing has been a preoccupation for a number of years. What modified in 2025, in response to Hsu, is how apprehensive shoppers are about weakening labour markets. “Popping out of the pandemic, individuals have been prepared to maintain spending via their unfavourable emotions concerning the financial system, as a result of they’d dependable incomes. Now greater than two-thirds of shoppers imagine unemployment goes to worsen within the 12 months forward.”
All of the museum leaders The Artwork Newspaper spoke with agree that extra creativity than ever is required to convey cash in. Isham, who has seen all his museum’s federal funding minimize to zero, says: “We’ve actually needed to diversify our funding sources and assume very entrepreneurially about our backside line.”
Based on the SMU DataArts analysis centre at Southern Methodist College in Texas, complete income for the US nonprofit tradition sector fell by 36% between 2019 and 2024, when accounting for inflation. Contributed income of each type (from trustees, people, company donors, foundations and public our bodies) fell to under pre-pandemic ranges, with a drops of 25% in basis funding and 26% in authorities help, relative to 2023. Common earned revenue additionally dropped, by 17.5%.
On the identical time, top-tier giving stays a very powerful supply of funding for museums. As Dennis places it: “the pool is sort of massive”. The problem, she says, is “discovering methods to attach with extra supporters. As a result of they’re there.” The AIC is a living proof: it has succeeded in rising its endowment by $230m in new philanthropy in recent times.
Doing so is intently linked to the central significance of understanding and serving the local people, at each stage—of guaranteeing a way of possession and funding. As Stulen notes, the place the outdated mannequin would have museums aspire to outdoors protection—media in New York or Europe, say—now, the Seattle Artwork Museum is prioritising its neighbours. “We have to really matter to the people who find themselves strolling via our entrance door.”
