December 24, 2008
Bead Museum To Close
The Washington Business Journal breaks the bad news at the Bead Museum: the museum will shutter at the end of this year. The report describes the museum's woes:
Despite minimal money spent on marketing and collaborating with other cultural and community groups, the 1,600-square-foot museum could not stay afloat. Competition with D.C. tourists vying to see the visible Smithsonian Institution sites along the National Mall did not help. The Bead Museum is tucked inside the Jenifer Building at 400 7th St. NW.The report keys in on museum officials' hopes that foot traffic would increase with the opening of the Textile Museum in the neighborhood in 2008. But the sales associated with foot traffic weren't the Bead Museum's problem. Or rather, problems.The museum’s main income stream has come from gift shop sales and twice-yearly bead bazaar sales. The rest comes from membership fees and donations.
According to publicly available tax records, net receipts (from gift-store and other sales activies) reached their highest mark in fiscal year 2007, at $71,259 — up from FY 2006's $63,970 and consistent with performance in prior years. In addition, the Bead Museum reported $26,189 in additional revenue — receipts that dwarfed figures from FY 2006 ($842) and FY 2005 ($1,027). By all accounts, the Bead Museum enjoyed a strong year in sales last year. (Figures for FY 2008 are not available.)
The Bead Museum did not enjoy much in the way of public support, however. Membership fees declined over the last few years, though not precipitously. Program service revenue — including government contracts and the like — dropped from $105,777 in FY 2005 to $70,377 in FY 2007. However, the sharpest decline came in direct support: contributions, gifts, and grants. These figures dropped from $34,215 in FY 2005 to $24,124 in FY 2006 — before falling a whole order of magnitude in FY 2007, when direct contributions totaled $2,016.
At the same time, the rent went up. Occupancy costs nearly doubled from FY 2005 to FY 2007, rising from $37,000 to $67,000. From the tax records, a loose sketch emerges of an organization that began to lose its footing while its station in Penn Quarter continued to prove untenable.
One wonders whether the Bead Museum ever approached the Textile Museum about combining forces to create a Craft Museum. (Probably an unimaginable horror to the hardcore advocates of the respective bead and text arts.) Will you miss the Bead Museum, Washington?
Bead Museum photograph used with permission under a Creative Commons license with Flickr user stgermh
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Good F'in Riddance. A Bead Museum, seriously? I couldn't believe this when I walked by it. It's a waste of space in Penn Quarter. Don't think there is enough room there but this area needs a Corner Bakery!
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Bees?
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They definitely had the best-named show of the Shakespeare in Washington Festival a few years back: "To Bead or Not to Bead."
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I didn't know it was there.
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monkey joke about beads in 3...2...1...
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Yet the Postal Museum lives on...
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monkey joke about anal beads in 3....2....1.....
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So, is it too late for them to have a "Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo"-esque community bead event to save the museum? Dudes doing "bead stuff" n'shit in front of the museum to block the bulldozers.
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go on with yo bead self
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Pull string. Weeeeeeeeeeeee!
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Get over there, quick! The Bead Museum is absolutely great.
Really.
Beads are "trade goods," the original means by which trade was globalized.
At this point in time, if you think anything in your wallet, bank account, or portfolio has more intrinsic value than a string of beads, you are simply not paying attention.
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Mike, I'd rather be at a salt museum. ;)
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While it is always tragic to lose one of our great museums devoted to beads and beading culture, lets hope they have a bead on a new location.
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I'm bead side myself
that's unbeadeavible
is this really a beadevalid post?
www.ryanhollowayphotography.com
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I think a bread museum would be pretty cool.
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The bead museum is actually pretty cool, but I always wondered how it stayed afloat. It's not big or well-known enough to draw a lot of repeat visitors. I donated and became a member a few years ago, and then I never heard from them again. Never got a reminder to renew my membership or to support (or even to tell me about) special exhibits and events. An organization that never contacts its donors is an organization that is doomed. I'm sad to see it go but I think they probably could have done much more to help themselves.
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Joint venture with the Museum of Sex maybe? They could get Adam and Eve or Doc Johnson to sponsor an "Anal Love Beads Through the Ages" touring exhibit. I'd buy the comemorative Xmas "pornament."
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There is actually another bead museum, in Arizona.
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hello, people? if it weren't for beads, there'd be no america. i'm going before they close and gonna buy a piece of manhattan with what i collect.
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The bead museum was a nifty little place on the order of "hm, i never knew that," rather than "wow, that is so incredibly awesome." It was definitely worth a visit, but I can understand how it failed to stay afloat.