Officials want historic museum dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe to be self-sufficient by next year
By Chris Kaltenbach, (The Baltimore Sun, 2/4/2011)
The long-time curator of Baltimore’s Edgar Allan Poe House says the museum could be forced to close if city officials stick to their insistence that it be well on the road to self-sufficiency by July of next year.
Baltimore officials — who last summer cut the Poe House’s funding — have ordered the city’s Committee for Historic & Architectural Preservation (CHAP) to settle on a plan to operate the museum without using public funds. The plan must be in place by July 2012.
“That’s a big order,” says Jeff Jerome, who has been curator since 1979. “I’ve been talking to other museums, and each and every one of them — first of all, when they stop laughing, they say, ‘Jeff, you should have been doing this three years ago.’ You just can’t do this in a year.”
The museum, in a North Amity Street home where Poe lived from late 1832 or early 1833 until 1835, operates on an annual budget of $85,000.
Continue reading “Poe House could close without city help, curator warns” at The Baltimore Sun.
