The Cincinnati Art Museum found it impractical to spend as much as $2.5 million a year on special exhibitions, given its declining endowment — down to about $70 million from about $80 million in 2008 — when it has unexploited holdings like circus posters and Dutch contemporary design.
The discussion has noted a number of recent cases, including the National Academy Museum's sale in 2008 of two Hudson River School paintings to cover operating costs and Brandeis University's announcement last year that it would close its Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Mass., and sell the collection because of its declining endowment, a plan that the university has since reconsidered.
But over time, with people's portfolios declining or foundation endowments declining, are people going to continue giving, particularly when it comes to the nonrelief groups?" Some groups are choosing to set up their own Sept. 11 efforts, he said, despite the proliferation of such funds and the deep pockets of government disaster relief agencies.
"With college endowments declining and states cutting higher education budgets," Mr. Kahlenberg said, "low-income college students will be more squeezed than ever, and attrition rates are likely to increase.
Falling endowments, declining fundraising and growing student need have pressed many college budgets to the breaking point.
The combination of students who can no longer afford student loans - or simply can no longer find them - declining values of endowments, and declining state and local tax revenues, will close the opportunity for college education for large numbers of young Americans.
In that period, some artists were declining grants from the endowment.
At the Metropolitan Opera the general manager, Peter Gelb, cut his $1.5 million compensation twice starting in December 2008 in response to declining donations, ticket sales and endowment, and recognizing that the opera's budget would have to shrink across the board.
Same-sex school Sweet Briar College, located in rural Virginia, had a healthy endowment but a declining enrollment.
The decline in endowments is also affecting construction projects.
