The museum has suffered from rising costs and lower attendance. The cuts followed those at the Brooklyn Museum, which trimmed 10 percent of its staff this month.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum said Friday that it was laying off 20 employees across the museum — or 7 percent of its staff — starting immediately, in the aftermath of financial challenges that have continued to snowball over the last decade.
Mariët Westermann, the museum’s director and chief executive since 2024, said in a statement that efforts to improve the fiscal picture, including growing the endowment, programming fewer exhibitions and raising ticket prices, had not done enough.
“Our overall financial picture is not where it needs to be,” she wrote in a staff letter. “To be fiscally responsible now and position the museum well for the future, we have made the difficult decision to reorganize some teams and reduce staffing across the museum.”
Senior leadership at the Guggenheim will not be taking pay cuts, according to a museum spokeswoman, Tina Vaz. The cuts are spread over six departments, including advancement, education, publications and archives, but do not affect curators and top executives. Additionally, the museum’s chief curator, Naomi Beckwith, who is organizing two major exhibitions in Europe for outside institutions, will continue in her role (and she is finishing work on a major solo exhibition for the artist Rashid Johnson, a former museum trustee, which opens at the Guggenheim in April).
The layoffs were the latest sign that New York’s museum sector has suffered from rising overhead costs and lower attendance since the Covid pandemic. Earlier this month, the Brooklyn Museum said that it was facing a projected $10 million deficit, planned to cut 40 employees, and would mount fewer exhibitions. On Friday, the New York City Council held a hearing to assess the possible effects of budget cuts on city services, including cultural institutions.