News from the Pennsylvania Federation of Museums and Historical Organizations

At the time of this essay, museums in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are faced with the economic woes that confront the rest of the nation. After September 11, 2001, financial support from foundations, corporations, and private individuals started to decline. However, during the early to mid-2000s, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took the opposite route. State funding for museums increased to a high of $6.3 million. This money was allocated to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) for its Pennsylvania History and Museum Grant Program.¹ PHMC awarded grants for projects, general operating support (GOS), technical assistance, historic markers, statewide organizations—such as the Pennsylvania Federation of Museums and Historical Organizations (PFMHO) and the Pennsylvania Historical Association (PHA)—and statewide conferences. The majority of the $6.3 million went to museums in the form of GOS grants though there was generous funding for the other grant categories as well.² In addition to the peer-reviewed PHMC grant program, museums received grants from the state legislature as well as other state agencies. Nine museums had separate line items in the yearly state budget and were recipients of GOS through that funding mechanism. They are familiarly known as the "non-preferreds."

Once the United States economy began to weaken as this decade progressed and reached crisis status by the end of it, museums have coped by cutting back or eliminating staff, exhibits, and public programming. As can be expected, the Museum Assistance line item followed suit. By 2008, the appropriation had dropped to $3.8 million. The PHMC still awarded grants in every grant category, but GOS grants had lessened enough that PHMC no longer used a peer-review process based on institutional excellence for this type of grant. Instead, PHMC began utilizing a formula-based method based on a museum's operating budget. The other grant categories maintained the peer-review practice.

In 2009 the Governor created a furor by recommending $0 for the Museum Assistance line item. What was more grievous was his allowing art museums (funded through the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts) and the nine non-preferreds to remain in his budget with slight decreases only. PFMHO, other related organizations, museum professionals and visitors, and concerned citizens sprang into action with a multi-month offense on the Pennsylvania General Assembly to reinstate the Museum Assistance line item. After a tortuous budget passage that took many iterations—as far as museum funding went—the Museum Assistance line item reappeared though with a reduced amount of $1.775 million.³ The museum community rejoiced and applauded state legislators who seemed to understand the importance of museums when the economy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had plunged into a catastrophe.

Though the PHMC's grant program⁴ survived another year, PHMC itself faces a struggle. As a state agency, it experienced a severe decrease in its annual appropriation in the 2009 budget with the consequential laying off of a significant number of employees and the elimination or rigorous pruning of public programming. Indeed, PHMC lost 43 percent of its annual budget and one-third of its employees. Hardest hit are the PHMC's museums and historic sites. Of the 22 museums and historic sites, only six of them operate on a full-time schedule. Some are closed for the winter; one is now administered by another museum; some are opened on a reduced and operated by volunteers; some are closed but have their property opened as parks by a state agency; and some are closed completely. Another PHMC museum, The State Museum of Pennsylvania, is open with reduced hours.⁵ Warnings via the "grapevine" envisage next year's budget crisis to worsen. How will that affect PHMC and its many public offerings? How will it affect state grant money to the nonprofits that benefit from state support? In a recent news article in The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Governor Rendell was not sure if the Commonwealth should be a custodian of its history. A director of a Harrisburg-based foundation dedicated to lessening taxes opined that this was...