How COVID-19 has affected the Greenville Museum of Art
Item
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Title
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How COVID-19 has affected the Greenville Museum of Art
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Description
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Brief account of how the Greenville Museum of Art has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Coverage
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Greenville, North Carolina
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Creator
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Porter, Trista
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Date
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2020-12-17
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Text
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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the Greenville Museum of Art (GMoA) in two major ways: its exhibition calendar and its capacity for fundraising. The GMoA was closed for roughly 6 months during Phases 1 and 2 of stay-at-home / safe re-opening orders. Both full-time staffers worked from home for a good portion of April and May, but because of the small number of staff, we believed it to be safe to continue working at the Museum sometime in May. We had to temporarily furlough our part-time office coordinator for about a month, but after receiving a SBA Payroll Protection Plan Loan for $18,100, we were able to hire him back to help with housekeeping and other projects while we continued to be closed for the next few months. Staff used the time to work on long-term projects that we don't normally have much time for such as cleaning, organizing, filing, and painting the galleries. Our spring exhibitions of work by ECU and Pitt Community College students was cancelled and our Visual Arts Academy program was cut short as well. We pushed the opening for our Freeman Vines and Dewey Funkhouser exhibitions, which were meant to open in May and June, but ended up opening in September.
Our regular income has taken a hit such as revenue from facility rentals, education tuition, and annual memberships (many folks were unable to renew or were holding out until we re-opened). We haven't been able to hold our regular in-person fundraisers that rely upon large attendance numbers and sponsorship income from businesses - many of which have also been hit by the pandemic. We adapted to more virtual fundraisers such as raffles and auctions to have some additional income, though these have generally come below what we would expect with our in-person events. We were, however, very fortunate to receive 2 $15,000 relief grants, one from the state arts council and one from the county arts council. These were made available to support operating costs and have been a huge blessing considering grant funds are rarely able to be used for this purpose. We also took some funds out of our endowment to assist with cash flow, so we acknowledge we've been better off than many.
Overall, we've enjoyed the opportunity to work on projects that have updated the facility and gallery spaces and to try out some different virtual fundraising ideas, many of which we'll continue to do or incorporate into our other fundraisers in the future.
