Fresno Bee: What Killed the Fresno Metropolitan Museum?

[stopbush]

When the Met shut its doors in January, 14 months after completing a renovation that was supposed to be its rebirth, its leaders blamed unforeseen construction issues and a bad economy that crippled fundraising.

Public records and insider accounts paint a different picture: The Met's trustees -- led by an ambitious executive director and a key ally on the board -- plunged into a multimillion-dollar project with incomplete plans and only cursory study of their 80-year-old building. A fuller study was rejected because of cost.

"It isn't until I'm about 20% into the project that I realize they have missed all kinds of things," Marsh said. "They have not done their due diligence."


http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/03/06/1849472_p4/what-killed-fresno-metropolitan.html?mi_pluck_action=comment_submitted&qwxq=8865537#Comments_Container

[onehandle]

1. France puts the highest percentage of GDP into the arts of any country.

We put our money into guns, beer and war.

[stopbush]

3. This situation had nothing to do with not spending money.

It had to do with the Museum's Board not doing due diligence prior to a renovation and seeing renovation costs skyrocket from $14MM to $28MM due to cost overruns. Had they done their due diligence, they wouldn't have spent a dime on renovation, because - as the article points out - they would have learned the the costs associated with asbestos removal etc were way too high to even consider their building to be a viable candidate for renovation.

There's spending money on the arts, and then there's throwing away money on arts-related projects that haven't been properly thought through. The debacle at the Fresno Met has not only cost Fresno its main visual arts institution, it has poisoned the waters for arts support in the entire region.

[gratuitous]

6. If we spent all that money on beer

Shouldn't we have better beer?

[onehandle]

7. True.

My beer budget goes to Yurpeen brewers.

[juno jones]

2. It's gonna take more than a Museum to get folks into Fresno.

I mean, there is no there there.

I say this in the nicest of ways. I spent the summer months of '99 living there in a friend's backyard after our bid for LA broke down on the road.

It's not the weather, it's the culture, silly. Perhaps they should take some of that museum money and do something for the homeless and hopeless in their city.

[stopbush]

4. I've lived a lot of places in my time, but Fresno was THE worst.

Three years in that dump of a town. Bad air that smells like cow dung half the time, bad economy, murderous gangs, nothing exciting to do, stifling heat in the summer, fog and ever-present dampness in the winter - Fresno has it all!

It's a flyover or a drive-thru, at best. The teens flee Fresno as soon as they graduate HS, if they graduate HS.

I moved out of Fresno two years ago. It was one of the best days of my life.

[juno jones]

5. Fresno is best seen from a rear-view mirror.

I hope the new(er) place is working out better for you. :hi: