25 Laid Off at Natural History Museum

After months of uncertainty, 25 county-paid staffers at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County were laid off Friday.

The layoffs, approved by the County Board of Supervisors, followed a directive to trim the museum’s staff by 47 positions to save $2.175 million from the museum budget as part of a countywide spending cut. The museum receives about $14 million a year from the county in addition to $5 million from a private museum foundation.

Catherine Krell, museum deputy director of marketing and public affairs, said staffers got official notices Thursday and Friday. “We regret having to do this,” Krell said. “We have no other alternatives unfortunately and no other options.”

In addition to the 25 staff laid off effective Friday, 20 county employees of the museum volunteered for an early separation pro gram and two were transferred to non-museum jobs in the county, Krell said.

The cuts reduced the Natural History Museum staff on the county payroll by almost one-third, from 157 to 110. Elsewhere, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art laid off three employees and its senior curator of American art resigned, reportedly to avoid being laid off.

Although few Natural History Museum staffers were willing to speak on the record, many expressed concern that the layoffs threaten the integrity of important programs. Of special concern to many volunteers and others were what the cuts would mean to the George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries, where three of the four science staff members have been laid off or have taken early retirement.

The Page Museum at the world-famous La Brea tar pits is the home of one of the world’s most important collections of Ice Age fossils. Volunteers at the museum said the staffing cuts will end the museum’s annual summer excavation of one of the tar pits and will force closure of the Page’s fishbowl paleontology laboratory, where visitors can watch the cleaning of fossilized saber-toothed cats, mammoths and other Ice Age animals.

Krell emphasized that cuts were made throughout the Natural History Museum, of which the Page is a satellite. Krell said the museum’s history department took the biggest hit, losing seven of nine staffers to layoffs. The Earth sciences department, which includes the science staff at the Page, was second with seven of 19 staff members losing their jobs.

Natural History Museum officials, including Director Craig Black, have insisted that the Page Museum would not be undermined by the layoffs. But on Thursday, the senior member of the Page science staff, George T. Jefferson, announced that he is leaving the Page to take a position as a paleontologist at Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Two other science staffers have been laid off, although one was informed that she would be rehired immediately by the museum foundation.

Krell and other museum officials have said that the loss of science staffers at the Page would be offset by the fact that John Harris, head of the Natural History Museum’s Earth sciences division, would be spending more time at the Page, reflecting his desire to perform research with the museum’s collection of fossils. But Harris told The Times he had expressed an interest in working at the Page with the existing staff, particularly Jefferson.

The staff reductions took place in an increasingly acrimonious atmosphere in which modestly paid museum staffers have expressed resentment that they are losing their jobs while highly paid museum administrators, notably Black, remain. Black earns about $180,000 a year in addition to the use of a Hancock Park house. In contrast, Jefferson, the highest-paid Page staffer to be targeted for layoff, earned $48,000 a year.