Museums

metropolitan FAIL

Big layoffs announced at the Met, in addition to a museum wide hiring freeze. Most of the layoffs come in the merchandising/retail department, a consumerist branch which to be quite honest we don’t give two shits about in the abstract, but this is still depressing. Here’s the meaty, awful paragraph from the Times’ article:
The museum has imposed a hiring freeze, halted merit salary raises and curtailed staff travel and entertainment as well as the use of temporary employees. But it said that “prospective, significant, and long-term reductions” in annual operating income from its endowment had made layoffs imperative. The endowment is estimated to have lost about $800 million, or 28 percent of its value, since last summer, when it was worth $2.9 billion. And that estimate does not include declines since Jan. 1.

Good god, $800 million down the tubes?

Tags: bad news bears, greatest depression, layoffs, recession, this ain't good, wuh woh