The financially strapped National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame has closed.
The future of the museum and its affiliated school in a restored bathhouse in Saratoga Spa State Park is unclear. It is being absorbed into the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
“It doesn’t exist anymore,” said Anthony Ianniello, an attorney who sits on the board of SPAC and was also on the dance museum’s board. Though he confirmed that SPAC will take over the museum, he said he does not know the details of the plan or if it will remain a museum.
“The best information would be from SPAC and their people and the director,” Ianniello said. “I don’t know the details of what will be done. … If you want accurate information, I’m not the one who can give you that.”
SPAC spokeswoman Kristy Ventre said that SPAC plans to make a formal announcement later in the summer.
“SPAC is currently collaborating with the administration of the Museum of Dance to help with plans to reopen the facility to the public,” a statement from SPAC read. “We will provide more details as those plans progress.”
Michele Riggi, the longtime board president of the museum, did not return a call to discuss the closure. But Bruce Curtis, who is the museum’s operations and special events manager, said the facility is still booking weddings through the end of 2022.
Asked if the museum still existed, he said it did.
“It takes a while,” Curtis said. “SPAC has its own people coming in. We are not going anywhere. It just takes time to get it all organized.”
Meanwhile, the museum’s popular School of the Arts in the rear of the former bathhouse has also closed. Directors Joan Anderson and Cristiane Santos have left and formed their own school of dance, the Saratoga Springs Youth Ballet on Geyser Road in Ballston Spa.
The Museum of Dance, which was founded by Lewis Swyer with Cornelius “Sonny” Vanderbilt Whitney and Marylou Whitney, has faced challenges to maintain its balance – both staffing and financially — since it opened in 1987.
Beginning in 1991, SPAC took over and from then on, it had a string of directors who were hired and fired by then-SPAC President and Executive Director Herb Chesbrough. In 2006, the two organizations split when Chesbrough’s successor, Marcia White, paid off the museum’s debt of $1.2 million so the museum could go independent and apply for grant money.
At the time, White said, “They are in the black and breaking even for the first time in a long time.”
Being in the black, however, remained challenging. Dance Museum filings with the state Office of Charities shows that the museum’s assets continually dwindled. In 2019, its filings show that revenue was reported to be $690,622, but expenses were $1,021,537. In 2018, revenue was reported to be $659,056 but expenses were $947,800. And in 2017, revenue was $834,290 with expenses at $890,435.
In 2016, White stepped down and Elizabeth Sobol assumed leadership of SPAC. As president and CEO, she reduced the presence of New York City Ballet, a founding flagship company at SPAC from weeks to days. That led to fewer coinciding events at the museum that attracted fans who came out in droves to meet the company’s stars. The dancers also taught master classes at the museum’s school — lending both a cache and glamour.
Ballet fans, like Louise Goldstein who remembers when New York City Ballet spent a month in Saratoga Springs and when the museum had many events with its glitterati, criticized the continual chipping away at the ballet and the subsequent closure of the museum.
“It’s horrifying what this administration is doing,” said Goldstein, a member of Save the Ballet, which fought to keep the ballet at SPAC when it was under threat in 2004 and 2005. “This administration doesn’t care about the ballet. I’ve been sick about it. The dance museum is the least of it … Ballet is expensive, but that’s what rich people are for. There have never been so many rich people in Saratoga. But Sobol doesn’t develop them.”
Goldstein, who also heads Friends of Victoria Pool, which is also in Spa State Park, said that Save the Ballet must return.
“We have to do something to revive local support,” she said.
Source : TimesUnion
