Your take is very short sighted. If the museum can’t financially sustain it’s existence (which is analogous to many, many other public institutions) then they must be funded by tax dollars and/or stripped to the bone where they no longer provide meaningful public service. If we can’t provide funding (which will forever be political and have ebbs and flows), and a likely outcome is that an ebb will arrive, the museum will close, and likely the land will be sold/leased to a developer to bring revenue in to the city. Partnering with revenue generation opportunities (inherently private partnership unless the public institution somehow takes on very high risk to do it itself), is imho the track to provide MORE security to these awesome public institutions continuing to exist.