This is a difficult moment for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and our entire community. To address a grave and unsustainable structural deficit, we have taken the painful step of reducing our staff. This action puts us on the path to stabilize the Museum for future generations and fulfill our mission.

Last week, we implemented a strategic restructuring that included a reduction of our workforce. We eliminated the positions of 33 active employees (6.3 percent of total active staff); 489 active staff remain. This staff reduction was the result of a thorough review of all aspects of the Museum’s operations. We followed clear principles: supporting our visitors, safeguarding our collection, maintaining our building, as well as enabling future strategic investments that will move the MFA forward.

The MFA’s mission—to preserve preeminent collections in trust for future generations, provide direct encounters with works of art and opportunities to learn, and serve a wide variety of people and celebrate diverse cultures—drove our decisions. Our mission and values remain unchanged:

• We retain 34 extraordinary curators who steward and share diverse collections spanning 5,000 years of art from around the world.
• Our longstanding learning and community outreach programs—among them our community celebrations, teen programs, paid internships, and public programs—will continue with a staff of 55 devoted educators and community liaisons.
• Our commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity, and access is unwavering and core to who we are. Current exhibitions such as “Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal” and our contemporary installation “Counter Histories” are only two examples of how we showcase diverse voices and perspectives.

Our community has expressed disbelief, sadness, and frustration about these actions, and many have shared deep concern about what is at risk. Each departing staff member represents an incalculable loss of knowledge, experience, and dedication. We feel and acknowledge the weight of each of these losses, personally and institutionally, at a moment of great uncertainty in the world.

I hope you will take the time to read the rest of this message to understand why the Board of Trustees and I believe that, unfortunately, this was an essential and unavoidable action.

The reorganization and staff reduction were required to address the MFA’s structural deficit—a challenge that preceded the pandemic and has compounded over years of systemic pressures facing museums and cultural institutions. While extraordinary support from the Greater Boston community helped us navigate these challenges, our structural imbalance has become unsustainable, with expenses increasing faster than revenue and deficits projected to grow. We had to take this difficult reduction as a first, critical step toward eliminating that deficit and preserving our mission and collection for future generations. Inaction would have caused even greater hardship in the future.

How did we reach the decision to eliminate important positions that have had such impact in our community, including curators and educators? Bearing in mind our mission and the steep financial challenges we face, we had to prioritize the direct care of the collection and the building along with the direct service of our visitors. Other areas such as administration, operations, marketing, and fundraising therefore accounted for three-quarters of the staff reductions.

We also reviewed curatorial staffing levels and eliminated seven positions. We were guided by a commitment to ensure that each area of the collection will continue to be cared for and supported by remaining staff. We also sought to recalibrate the balance between curatorial staff and the many staff behind the scenes who provide direct care of collections and critical support for curatorial work.

Similarly, we reviewed learning and community engagement programs to devote more resources to programs with the greatest reach and impact. We also ensured continuity in teen programs and other K–12 programs that are valued by our community.

All along, we took steps to ensure that cuts would not disproportionately impact any groups based on their background or identity. One third of our entire staff identified as people of color prior to the restructuring—and those numbers are the same today.

The MFA has opened its doors to visitors for 156 years. More work lies ahead to adapt our institution to current realities and future needs. We are confident we are on the right path and remain grateful to our staff—both departing and continuing—for their commitment to this essential work.

Pierre Terjanian
Ann and Graham Gund Director