Bad times and building in the arts

A couple interesting stories from this week's Crain's NY for folks interested in museums and the arts:

• The Queens Museum of Art owes its new construction project to the financial crisis. During the boom they couldn't find qualified contractors to bid on the project. Now, with so many contractors looking for jobs, they were able to find better contractors and a lower price.

"It is a terrific time for nonprofits to build," says Ken Levien, president of an eponymous construction management firm. "Next year, because the economy will be slow, something that costs me a dollar today should cost 75 cents."

• Museums and arts charities have suffered declining attendance recently---"I can almost track the falloff to the day the Lehman Brothers announcement came out," says Lisa Mallory, vice president of marketing at BAM. In response, organizations have been cutting their ticket prices upwards of 50%. Some promotions tie discounts to do-gooding, such as offering discounts to folks who bring donations to a food bank, a move that would appear to be designed to offset the perception that "at times like this, it's indulgent to take themselves to the theater."