Five national traveling exhibits will still make stops in 2015 at William F. Laman Library in North Little Rock as scheduled, despite budgetary cutbacks in staff, hours and programs already underway at the library's two locations, the library's board of trustees was told Monday.
The William F. Laman Public Library System is contractually obligated to go ahead with the scheduled exhibits because those are set 12-18 months ahead of time. Otherwise, the library system would lose its deposits and be charged to relocate the items, interim Director Mary Furlough told the board.
Such exhibits, available for free to library visitors, can cost the library thousands of dollars in rental fees to schedule.
The board also plans to consider at its January meeting a proposal by the Argenta Arts Foundation to let that group underwrite such high-quality exhibits so those can continue in the future.
Library administrators announced less than three weeks ago that financial stress in the library system would mean cancellation of all of the scheduled national exhibits in 2015 in favor of showcasing local artists' works. A reduction in library hours took effect Dec. 1, and 11 staff members are to lose their jobs Jan. 1.
An income statement given to the board Monday showed the public library system's total revenue through the year's first 11 months to be $516,815 less than its expenses.
The exhibits for 2015 will be: "Mail Call," from the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum, Feb. 7-April 19; "The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic," April 24-June 6; "Spirited: Prohibition in America," June 16-Aug. 11; "Step Right Up: Behind the Scenes of the Circus Big Top (1890-1965)," Sept. 1-Oct. 20; and "Infamy: December 7, 1941," a photographic exhibit from the National World War II Museum in New Orleans about the Pearl Harbor attack, Oct. 30-Dec. 7.
There will also be the Arkansas Arts Council's "Small Works on Paper" exhibit Jan. 3-27, featuring original works by Arkansas artists, but that is funded by the Arkansas Art Center, Furlough said.
"We will still have all of them next year because the contracts are done so far out," Furlough said after the meeting. "We found out we are locked into them, and we're past the date to change it. If we canceled, we would also have to pay for storage and shipping until they could go somewhere else."
The exhibits to continue will only be at the main library at 2801 Orange St. Other exhibits planned at the smaller gallery area at the Argenta Branch at 420 Main St., are still canceled, Furlough said. The branch opened in April and didn't yet have a long-term exhibition schedule.
The exhibit halls through November have drawn 13,599 visitors at the main library and 15,700 at the Argenta branch in downtown, according to a chart given to the board Monday. The libraries have had 365,371 patrons total through the first 11 months this year.
"Two or three" exhibits have been scheduled for the main library in 2016 already, Furlough told the board, but she wants to cancel those, instead of waiting to see if finances improve over the next year.
Furlough became interim director when longtime Executive Director Jeff Baskin was diagnosed in July with an advanced stage of cancer. Baskin died Sept. 9.
"We need to get those canceled," Furlough said. "I want to cancel and be done with it."
Keeping "high-quality" national exhibits available to Laman patrons is the goal of a proposal by the nonprofit Argenta Arts Foundation, Furlough told the board. The summarized proposal contained conditions, including being a one-year contract and the library hosting private viewings for sponsors, to which board members weren't immediately agreeable. The proposal was tabled until next month's meeting.
"Some of it is good, and some I am opposed to," said board member Nancy White, who also suggested a subcommittee to consider the idea of giving up total control of the exhibits. "I'm a little leery of people coming in from outside [the library system]."
Metro on 12/09/2014