Re “San Diego Museum of Art lays off nearly a dozen staff” (Aug. 9): It is unfortunate to read about the San Diego Museum of Art’s decision to lay off staff.
I can’t speak to any individual organization’s finances or managerial decisions, but what I can say from my own research on our local arts and culture sector is that whenever arts organizations cut staff, everyone loses: community programs shrink, institutional knowledge is lost, and San Diegans are out of work.
When this happens in organizations of every size across the sector, it is no longer a story about any one museum’s decisions and becomes a story about how we fund arts and culture in the San Diego region. And when nearly 4 in 10 of our arts organizations run deficits year after year, what the sector needs isn’t better coping. It needs a stable, dependable funding foundation.
— Victoria Plettner-Saunders, San Diego