0.9 Chapter seven: retrenchment and the struggle for survival, 19

Chapter seven: retrenchment and the struggle for survival, 1992-1994

Closing the doors

The resignation of Barbara Debs marked the beginning of a period that defies direct comparison to any previous time in the Society's history. The combination of enormous—intransigent—financial problems and a lack of full-time admin­istrative leadership made it impossible for the Society to maintain an organized program of operations. As had been the case for some time, the board's focus could not be on supporting the Society's staff and overseeing their efforts to pur­sue its programmatic mission; the financial situation was simply too dire for that. At his first board meeting as interim chief executive, in November 1992, Norman Pearlstine reported that the "cash flow situation is much worse than anticipated and unless we receive a cash infusion in the near term, [there is] no other alter­native but to close the door at year-end."

At the senior staff level, Debs's departure created a power vacuum that fed a natural and growing rivalry among her three chief deputies: the vice president of external affairs, Juliana Sciolla; the director of the library, Jean Ashton; and the director of the museum, Holly Hotchner. Even in more stable financial times, with a strong full-time administrator at its helm, the Society's multidimensional structure was difficult to manage. Allocating scarce resources between the museum and the library, for example, had always been contentious and difficult.

It was even more so now. Pearlstine recognized that he could not manage the day-to-day operations of an institution in such turmoil on a part-time basis.

In late October, Pearlstine named Sciolla to be his interim chief financial officer. In her role as vice president for external affairs, Sciolla had been respon­sible for overseeing the development, membership, and public relations offices. She had also been the primary liaison between the Society and state representa­tives in Albany. Prior to joining the Society, Sciolla had been an administrator at the New York State Council on the Arts. For someone with no experience in financial management, hers was truly going to be a tremendous challenge.

With Sciolla responsible for management of the day-to-day finances, Pearl­stine concentrated on pursuing affiliations with other cultural institutions. Of the many contacts Pearlstine initiated, his conversations with the New York Public Library (NYPL) were the most serious and led to the possibility for a major col­laboration. On November 19, the NYPL board of trustees approved a plan to consider loaning the Society up to $1.5 million. In an article that appeared in the New York Times, Pearlstine explained that even though the Society had "made con­siderable progress over the past few years in preserving our collections and mak­ing them more available to the public,. . . the plain fact is that we have run out of cash and we have run out of time. . . . The library's assistance will give us time to consider appropriate options, including possible affiliations with the library or some other institution."