Washington’s arts and culture sector lost nearly $100M when COVID-19 pandemic hit
Jan. 28—The corridors of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Browne’s Addition were quiet this week, the closure another casualty of COVID-19’s interruption of the humanities in Washington.
“We just didn’t have staff,” Wesley Jessup, the museum’s executive director, said Thursday. “We didn’t have the capacity.”
The arrival of the omicron variant caused the MAC to close its doors once again and prompted another round of cancellations in an industry that has been hit hard by the pandemic. A study released earlier this month by ArtsFund, a Washington nonprofit advocating for the arts, found that organizations promoting the humanities, culture and sciences in the state, including museums, theaters and artisan guilds, lost nearly $100 million in revenue in the immediate months following the COVID-19 outbreak, and forced 41% of respondents to lay off or furlough workers.
It will likely take years, and significant public investment, to ensure the