OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN

It was a rare moment in the Chicago Jewish community. In 2007 the new, architecturally significant Spertus Institute Building opened within its magnificent glass facade on South Michigan Avenue -- housing classrooms, faculty offices, conference and Museum facilities. It was going to be the seminal achievement for the then Spertus Board and its former CEO who had driven the project.  And, then it wasn't.

Neither that Board nor that CEO had raised sufficient funds for the construction of the Institute's new home nor had they raised any endowment funds to cover income shortfalls, maintenance and the like; instead, they borrowed heavily. And they did all of this over the strong objections of the Jewish Federation which advised Spertus's leaders that Spertus leadership, having raised inadequate funds to support it: (1)  the project was not financially feasible and (2) the Federation should not, in the future, be expected to underwrite it or rescue it.

Spertus's leaders ignored the warnings and proceeded. The reviews of the building were ecstatic; nonetheless, the project soon went into default. Spertus's lender, asserting a multi-million dollar default, threatened foreclosure; and was tragically unwilling to negotiate. The CEO who spearheaded the development and who urged the Spertus Board on in the face of the Federation's warnings, was soon replaced as were a significant membership of the Board. The new leadership, with a dynamic duo in the persons of its new Board Chair and CEO, approached Federation which listened sympathetically to the successor leaders, commited as they were to rescue this visible communal/national institution. (I was asked to be Federation's liaison to the new Spertus Board working with the Spertus team.) During my time, candidly, little progress was made in meeting the lender's ever more Draconian demands. Portions of the building were put up for rent while Spertus sensed that it was staring down the barrell of a loaded gun.

And, then, Steve Nasatir identified a major donor who anonymously stepped forward with the funds necessary for a financial rescue, and further. funds tp support an endowment that would help to assure that the Institute could proceed without further financial threats to its existence were made available. 

That was a real rescue.

And, then, there is this...

The tragedy that is the National Museum of American Jewish History.

If Spertus Institute is the micro; this Museum is the macro. It's financial failure is the realization in real time of Santayana's warning -- you know the one about not learning from the mistakes of the past being doomed to repeat them. You know the one. 

The Museum's founders commited all of those errors that Chicago's Spertus leaders had fumbled only to the tune of 10s of millions more in debt -- and there was no Chicago federation to which to turn to be saved. These Museum Founders must have believed that "God will provide." Their edifice complex produced an architecturally significant White Elephant with a $150 million mortgage in default and no ability to pay it. Annual operating deficits compounded the debt. And, today, in the midst of the pandemic with attendant closures, there are no visitors, no revenue. As Robin Pogrebin, writing in The New York Times of the travails of the Tenement Museum and other cultural institutions, observed:

"They do not have large endowments or deep-pocketed donors, and have...depended on admission fees to keep the lights on...lW]ithout more suppoprt for rent, payroll, utilities, insurance and other costs...it's likely that many will be unable to reopen even once the worst is over." 

To his great credit, Dr. Misha Galperin -- who appears to enjoy the challenges of lost causes (after all Misha had served as CEO of JAID, the Jewish Agency International Development) -- agreed to step in as a CEO on a rescue mission -- he did so when only the Trump Administration had been told that the World was about to be devastated by the coronavirus. The Museum filed for bankruptcy on March 2 and, with no natural constituency, its attendance choked off by quarantine and a dismal total failed initial fund raising effort at a time of the stock markets in dramatic increase, there is every likelihood that this failure will be a national embarrassment on the National Independence Mall, Misha's cheerleading and FRD prowess notwithstanding.

Books will no doubt be written about this terrible failure. If the NMAJH leaders attempt to point to the virus as the proximate cause of this collapse, the record will show that that would be wrong...very wrong. In point of fact, the Museum's bankruptcy was baked into the reality that the fund-raising to support this project failed from Day One and those who "birthed" this Museum failed to act when the first indicia of failure were staring them in the face. 

And that is the real shame. I fear that in the face of the worldwide economic collapse, the Museum's failure will be but a footnote among many. 

Rwexler