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Thursday Morning Roundup


by Stephen Becker 11 Aug 2011 7:56 AM

Today in the roundup: A thorough look at the DMA’s financial landscape and the finalized Fort Worth Music Festival lineup.

CTA TBD

THE DMA’S FINANCIALS: As we’ve all been riding the stock market’s ups and downs over the last few years, the Dallas Museum of Art has been riding them right along with us. The major difference, though, is that the museum gets hit twice when times are tough – once when its own investments suffer and again when we drop our memberships. “Our experience shows that, in a tough economic time, the first thing people drop is contributions to nonprofit organizations such as ours,”Jeffrey Guy, the museum’s CFO, tells dallasnews.com in a story that breaks down the museum’s financial status. “We go to the bottom first, and we’re the last to rise.”

TALKING TUT: A major factor in the DMA’s recent finances is 2008’s blockbuster “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.” The exhibition generated a lot of buzz around the museum but wasn’t necessarily a monetary win. John Eagle, the museum’s board president, says in the story mentioned above that the show brought in “hundreds of thousands” of people who otherwise wouldn’t have come to the museum. But there are other downsides to hosting prepackaged shows like Tut. Art Gallery of Ontario hosted the show in 2010, and its director, Matthew Teitelbaum, said in a panel discussion this summer that while patrons are learning, his museum wasn’t much of a participant. “If you’re just presenting and not interpreting — and therefore [not] deepening the capability of the institution by what you do — there is a feeling of loss,” he said during the discussion. “I think people actually come to museums to learn something about themselves, right?… And if you’re not in the middle of that as an institution, then I don’t think your visitors get it [either].”

FW MUSIC FEST FINALIZED: Fort Worth Music Festival (a.k.a. the Festival Formerly Known as Jazz By the Boulevard) has finalized its lineup. Among the more well-known acts that will play the Sept. 30-Oct. 1 are Marcia Ball, The Orbans, Telegraph Canyon, Dawes and Meat Puppets. Check the full lineup at dfw.com.

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