Less than a month after it put much of its staff on furlough, the National Building Museum is permanently cutting two-thirds of its staff, citing loss of revenue due to the pandemic.

More than 40 administrative and hourly visitor services positions will be eliminated, effective June 1, a museum spokesperson confirmed to DCist on Wednesday. That will leave just 18 core staff who are on partial furlough and two staff members working on grant-based projects.   

“The challenge was a difficult one: balancing the need to retain sufficient financial resources for reopening against the need to have adequate staff on board in order to reopen. Every scenario required a substantial reduction in force, along with an adjustment to the museum’s scope of work,” the museum said in an emailed statement.

Renting out the historic Great Hall is a major source of funding for the institution. But with the future of large gatherings in D.C. uncertain, museum leaders don’t expect it to pick up for a number of months.

The Building Museum also postponed its annual summer exhibition, a marquee event that has historically drawn large crowds. The museum partnered with the Folger Shakespeare Library on a Shakespearean playhouse, which was set to serve as an interactive exhibit by day and the stage for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by night. Officials have said the exhibition will now take place in July 2021.

And the museum has actually been closed for nearly six months. It shut its doors in the beginning of December to renovate the Great Hall’s ceramic floors, a project that was only supposed to keep the museum dark for three months. The museum was slated to reopen in March—right around the time that the pandemic forced much of the city to close, too.

The staffing cut comes after the Building Museum furloughed all visitor employees in April and partially furloughed the rest of its staff on May 1. Of the 42 positions that have now been eliminated, 23 are administrative staff and 19 are hourly visitors services staff, according to the museum.

Many of the city’s private museums are struggling as coronavirus-related closures have resulted in precipitous drops in revenue. “We’re taking it month by month at this point,” Helen Chason, the Kreeger Museum’s director, told WAMU at the end of March. But the National Building Museum’s financial future had been rocky even before the pandemic.

The institution laid off eight percent of its staff in February. At the time, outgoing executive director Chase Rynd told DCist that the cuts were due to a drop in revenue related to the renovation, along with broader financial challenges.

In the statement, the museum said it is still working on finalizing new features for when it is able to reopen—including a new exhibit called MASS Design Group: Justice Is Beauty, a new visitor center, and a celebration of its 40th anniversary—as well as developing protocols and policies to reopen in compliance with health guidance. It promised that the museum “will open as soon as possible.”