Hasta La Ideas

Back at the start of 2008, we asked in a post “Is the Chelsea Art Museum Breathing Its Last Breaths?” The museum and its founder/director, Dorothea Keeser, were struggling to pay its mortgage and it didn’t look like there was much hope. But they managed to keep afloat, even drawing up some talk outside of financials later that year when they cancelled an exhibition focused on terrorism. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the museum is back to familiar territory. Keeser’s company that owns the museum’s building has filed for bankruptcy, two years of loan extensions continue to leave the institution on the verge of foreclosure, and perhaps most notable, to help pay bills, the museum has attempted to collateralize its permanent collection. Doing this “violates the regulations of the state Education Department’s Board of Regents, which supervises and grants charters to museums” and as such, the Chelsea could lose its charter. Losing its charter could lose it its nonprofit status. The bankruptcy might fight off foreclosure for a bit, but the charter issue adds another struggle to the already ever-battling museum. We were wrong with our question back in 2008, but we’ll see if we should have asked it again now.

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