Kenner nets less than half of mayor’s salary in selling Mardi Gras Museum

12th March 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

It was a bittersweet auction in Rivertown for the throngs of carnival collectors, eager for a deal but sorry to see a repository dedicated to their passion, close. Yellow tags marred the exhibits at the Kenner Mardi Gras Museum, from the giant walk-through King Cake, to the costume shop exhibit, to the St Aug Band Uniform and the 12th Night Revelers Chefs’ Outfits (donned on mannequins—which were also for sale).

By Thursday afternoon, barkers had sold off Proteus and Rex invitations from the 19th century—as well as Carnival Ball overtures more recent, costumes, memorabilia, and even an automobile covered in beads caught at parades. By the end of Thursday, the cavernous entrance room that featured a float, life-sized masked revelers, and balconies of Orleanians yelling for throws, was near emptied, like the exhibits of the once proud museum.

The death of the latest Rivertown museum may, in fact, harken a shuttering of museums around the state of Louisiana if the Legislature proceeds on the recommended cuts by the Jindal Adminstration.

The City of Kenner celebrated the $44,000 it raised selling off the 20 year old museum. Several carnival collectors pursuing the exhibits on Wednesday privately told The Louisiana Weekly, that the collection should be worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars, but in the current economic climate, and the scheduling of the auction of a Thursday, predicted that the city would get far less than that sum.

Plaguing many of the bidders was the question that Yenni left unanswered. As one lady put it to the Weekly, “The American Museum Association guidelines say that that when a museum closes, the collections that were lent, need to be returned to their owners. That was done here. Then the remainder has to be offered to a comparable museum, the LSM or the museum in Lafayette. Was that done? No.” In fact, Mayor Yenni reportedly resisted calls to donate the Mardi Gras exhibits to the Louisiana State Museum’s Carni­val Col­lections.

“Museums never pay for themselves,” explained Robert Can­gelosi, president of the Friends of the Cabildo. “Only two museums in the country are able to fund themselves by the gate.” The remainder rely on government grants and private donors.

Kenner Mayor Mike Yenni argued for the closure of the Mardi Gras Museum, arguing that the historic property on Williams Blvd. was better used as a retail or restau­rant destination. He told The Louisiana Weekly, “Nobody goes to Kenner to see Museums.” If the admissions take at the gate could not fund the museum (and the monies from special event parties), the city could not afford to fund it.

Yenni maintained that if he had to chose between playgrounds and police protection versus history and cultural displays, he would choose the latter. However, predicating a museum’s success by the take at the gate is a logic that would demand the closure of the Louisiana State Museum. The central LSM, the Cabildo on Jackson Square, holds the original Death Mask of Napoleon, the signed Louisiana Purchase (the transfer occurred in the building), and exhibits from the Plessy v. Ferguson Case (the preliminary trial of ‘separate but equal’ occurred in the Cabildo).

Those relics only scratch the surface of the museum’s historical importance, yet the amount of money collected by the ticket takers at the museum door, according to LSM officials, does not even pay the salaries of the people selling the tickets—much less anyone else. Private donors like the Friends of the Cabildo help, but without the state underwriting the museum, it would quickly close.

And private givers are not a viable answer given the current economic climate. Endowments shrank by up to a third during the worst of the market collapse. Moreover, the larger the institution, the steeper the losses. According to a 2009 survey of North American museums by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), three out of five institutions lost revenue in 2008. The first half of 2009 was especially scary. Institutions that entered the downturn with shaky finances, like MoCA in Los Angeles, had near-death episodes. Others, most notably the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, flirted with art sales and closure.

If major institutions have trouble surviving, small museums like the Rivertown Mardi Gras collection, are closing every day. As Cangelosi explained to this newspaper, “Young people want interactive exhibits…video and audio experiences that bring the museum alive. That takes money, and for small museums like this, the future is not bright.”

That kind of museum investment is just the opposite of what the 2012 Jindal budget allocates. Secretary of State Tom Schedler warned that he might have to eliminate up to at least 10 percent of his authorized staff and would have to consider closing down state museums under proposed budget cuts for next year.

Schedler had been poised to accept about $765,000 in cuts this year. That would have been bad enough, forcing the elimination of 35 out of the 317 positions assigned to his office. However, he then discovered that his budget could be reduced by an additional $1.5 million that is supposed to come from savings in Jindal’s plans for the retirement system.

Since much of the Sec. State’s responsibilities for elections are mandated, and cannot be reduced, the money that remains of cultural and museum funding is disproportionately at risk every year. In other words, according to Schedler, what happens to the museums hinges on exactly how Gov. Bobby Jindal’s pension overhaul efforts play out.

The governor seeks for state workers to contribute an additional three percent of their paycheck to their own retirement and push back employees’ retirement age to 67. Schedler, in a letter to the administration, wrote that calculating the impact of shifting some of the costs of retirement onto employees in the secretary of state’s office would not generate enough savings to make up the gap in financing.

Administration officials countered arguing that the entire amount would be covered. In testimony before the House Appropriations committee Wednesday, Schedler responded that to make up the $1.5 million, he’d “have to consider closing state museums”.

Of the 17 museums operated by the Sec. State across Louisiana, the Secretary of State admitted that two of those are not operational and a third consists of a display in another government building. The remainder, though, received a total of about 268,000 visitors last year, and include the Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge and the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum in Shreve­port, which Schedler said has “Smithsonian-caliber” displays.

Schedler told the committee that if museums were closed, his office would continue to maintain the buildings and would see savings from laying off the employees who staff them. Those workers are hired under what Schedler described as the “Walmart model.” They garner no benefits, and only are staffed part time. In consequence, they are not civil service protected, nor part of the authorized positions allocated to the agency.

As the museums are not constitutionally mandated, the budget cuts leave the Secretary no choice, he explained. Legislation has been filed, at Schedler’s request, that would allow his office to close museums.

This article was originally published in the March 12, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper