The Dallas Museum of Art announced it has laid off 20 employees and made two full-time jobs part-time. Starting December 1, it would also no longer be open Tuesdays. Its regular hours will become 11 a.m. to 5 p.m, Wednesdays through Sundays.
The "difficult decisions," a press release said, were necessary to "realign the budget" through decreased operating expenses, a hiring freeze, a staff reorganization and a greater emphasis on its permanent collection — meaning it would import fewer new exhibitions.
The decisions were necessary adjustments to the "new realities in a post-pandemic world." Those realities include rising costs, the end of government emergency funding and audiences not returning to public events in significant numbers. The DMA is only the latest North Texas cultural organization to cut back. The Dallas Theater Center recently announced layoffs, and several area venues have closed entirely the past three years. Even in the United Kingdom, the visual arts sector has been declared "in a crisis."
But the DMA is also proceeding with a major expansion of its aging home. The museum recently hired the Spanish architecture firm, Nieto Sobejano, for a significant re-do of the Edward Larrabee Barnes-designed facility, which opened in 1984 as the first major cultural venue in the Arts District.
