BURST
Faced with an “unsustainable annual deficit,” the Vancouver Art Gallery is making dramatic cuts to its staff.
The VAG is laying off or buying out a third of its unionized employees, along with an unspecified number of non-union staff.
“The cuts are across the organization, every department, all levels,” said Jasmine Bradley of the VAG’s communications department.
Bradley said there are currently 129 full-time staff at the gallery. CUPE Local 15 president Warren Williams said 29 of the 90 unionized staff will be affected.
The cuts come after the VAG’s annual general meeting June 17, when it reported it had lost $2.85 million in operating revenue during the 2023-24 fiscal year, and was on pace to lose money in 2024-25.
Jon Stovell, chair of the VAG’s board of trustees, said Wednesday the gallery has “never really returned to pre-COVID attendance levels,” and “the whole (art gallery) sector across North America, and maybe Europe, is struggling.”
“There’s changes in how traditional visual arts organizations are funded,” said Stovell. “Philanthropy is challenging, government contributions are kind of diminishing.”
As a result, the VAG decided to make cuts to avoid what Stovell dubbed an “ uns u s t ainable annual deficit .”
“We’re not like a government that could just tax our way and keep going, we really are obligated to live within our means,” said Stovell.
“Those are the adjustments that we’re making. Our fiscal year starts on July 1, so we’re targeting a balanced budget for 2025-26.”
For 2024-25, though, he expects there will be a deficit “similar in magnitude” to 2023-24.
In December, the gallery made the decision to cancel plans for a flashy new art gallery designed by the Swiss firm Herzog and de Meuron.
Stovell said the gallery had already spent $63 million to $64 million on “soft costs” on the project, which was initially estimated at $350 million but later ballooned to a $600-million project when it was cancelled.
The VAG’s CEO and executive director Anthony Kiendl left the gallery in March. He joined the VAG after the departure of longtime head Kathleen Bartels in 2019, who had been the champion of the Herzog and de Meuron gallery.
The VAG is still looking to build a new gallery designed by a Canadian architect. But it will be more modest, because construction costs have soared. Stovell said building an art gallery today would probably cost $1,200 per square foot.
“Through this hyper-inflationary cycle that we’ve been in, everything has gotten more expensive — insurance, shipping, wages, repairing the (current) building — everything’s been more,” he said.
“I think the gallery also had been kind of scaling up a little bit in preparation for this new building — building a bigger team, and having all the extra costs of managing the project.”
The VAG also made a costly decision in 2019 to operate its own restaurant or bistro. According to the VAG’s 2023-24 report, the bistro had “an accumulated equity loss on investment” of $2,459,727.
The bistro was before Stovell’s time on the board. The VAG has stopped running the bistro by itself and leased it.
CUPE’s Williams has been meeting with union members to answer questions and provide information on the cuts.
“They’re offering severance packages, which are somewhat better than the collective agreement language allows,” said Williams.
“The employer has been pretty good about that. They’re in a deficit financially, there’s no doubt about that.”
According to the 2023-24 report, in its general fund the VAG had $12,099,467 in revenue that fiscal year, as well as $3,478,450 in grants from three levels of government.
This made for income of $16,466,917, versus expenses of $19,320,263, and a deficit of $2,853,346.
Other losses left the VAG with a “deficiency of revenue over expenses” of $3,973,186. “Interfund transfers” from other parts of the Vancouver Art Gallery Association left it with a deficit in the “fund balance” of $1,976,202.
The VAG’s building fund was still large: $98,663,735. It also had an acquisition fund of $1,772,745.
Revenue from admissions dropped to $2,731,368 in 2023-24 from $3,152,966 in 2018-19, the last year pre-COVID.