How Berkshire Museum Leaders Got To The Idea Of Selling Art

The story told by the newly released papers, which were made public on Monday, starts in April 2016. That’s when the board of the Berkshire Museum was presented with a detailed report from TDC, a group of museum consultants in Boston. In their “summary of capitalization needs,” TDC concluded that the museum needed about $2 million to pay down debt and about $6 million to improve the facilities. They also penciled in about $23 million in permanent endowments, a sum much greater than the museum’s existing $7.3 million endowment. Altogether, they concluded, the museum needed “an additional $25.61 million in new funds” to “stabilize its operations on multiple dimensions.”