Museums in Sherbrooke raise alarm over funding cuts

Museums in Sherbrooke raise alarm over funding cuts
Marc Garneau, La nuit je brûle, 2023, related to Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke’s new exhibition (Photo : Courtesy Marc Garneau)

By William Crooks

Local Journalism Initiative

Sherbrooke’s three downtown museums are raising concerns over recent budgetary decisions that threaten their financial stability and limit public access to culture. The Musée d’histoire de Sherbrooke (Mhist), the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke (MBAS), and the Musée de la nature et des sciences de Sherbrooke (MNS2) say recent cuts to cultural and educational funding have left them struggling to maintain services.

David Lacoste, director general of Mhist, described the situation as a growing crisis, pointing to multiple funding reductions that are putting pressure on the museums. “The final straw was the reform of the free first Sunday of the month program,” he said in a Jan. 30 interview. “Since 2018, all Quebec residents could visit participating museums for free on the first Sunday of the month, and the government reimbursed us for the lost revenue. Now, with the changes, only Quebec residents under 20 years old qualify. That means a loss of revenue, but more importantly, it restricts access to culture.”

Lacoste worries that this reform, combined with other cuts, will deter people from visiting museums altogether. “People who used to come for free now have to decide if they want to spend their money on a museum visit or put it toward food or rent,” he said. “This directly impacts cultural access for people of all income levels.”

In addition to the program changes, the museums are facing broader financial uncertainty. Lacoste noted that Sherbrooke’s school board has frozen funding for cultural field trips, reducing the number of student visits to local museums. “That’s another loss of revenue for us,” he said. “We also lost funding for francisation programs, which used to bring groups to our museum.”

These concerns were echoed in a joint press release issued by the three museums, where Alex Martin, director general of MNS2, highlighted the broader financial picture. “The bad news keeps coming. We’re facing a freeze on school field trips, drastic changes to the free Sundays program, and uncertainty around the next round of museum funding,” Martin stated. “It’s disappointing for the community, which is losing direct access to cultural programming.”

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