Sunday, October 29, 2006

John McAvity playing fast and loose with the facts

Howdy!

I'm late on this one, but last Thursday Mr. McAvity, who is the executive director of the Ottawa-based Canadian Museums Association told Richard Burnett (a good friend) "the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Canadian Centre for Architecture ... receive project funding. It could also force some of the smaller museums to close their doors." as an attempt to rally the public to save the Museum's Assistance Program that is managed by the department of Canadian Heritage. Only one problem, the Musee d'art contemporain has receiived less than 1% of its annual operating budget from the Museum Assistance Program for the past two years.

Ain't no way no museum is going to have to shut its doors because it lost less than 1% of its operating budget.

On the other hand, I would dearly love to see a clear and understandable version of the Canadian Museums Association's financial statements. They have a budget of over $4.2 million dollars, have run a deficit for the past two years, and I can 't for the life of me figure out who, or what the money was spent on. Does anyone know what Mr. McAvity's salary is?

Oh, and while I'm at it, back at the beginning of the month I pointed out that the first sentence of the last report on the Museum Assistance Programs were: 'Evaluators could not say whether the two programs are still critical to achievement of federal objectives. There has been no articulation of the federal government's museum policy and the place of MAP and CMAP within it since the 1990 Canadian Museum Policy, and the context in which the programs operate has evolved considerably.'

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