The management of Baltimore’s Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American Historical past & Tradition is working to iron out issues uncovered in an August 15 audit by the Maryland Division of Legislative Providers, based on a report within the Baltimore Solar.
The audit uncovered severe irregularities. It discovered costs on the museum’s company bank card that had been “with out a readily obvious enterprise objective.” It discovered two situations by which funds had been made to an worker’s PayPal account. A former worker was instructing guests to pay him for parking personally, and conserving the money. And the museum had a follow of pre-signing plenty of clean checks for emergency functions, and saved unsigned clean checks in an unsecured workplace.
Solely a small amount of cash, a complete of $10,115, was unaccounted for between April 2021 and January 2025. The museum’s annual finances is $6.3 million.
The Lewis is a quasi-governmental stage company, the one Baltimore museum to be labeled as such, says the Solar, which notes that taxpayers present as much as half the museum’s annual finances, whereas most different Maryland cultural teams obtain lower than ten % of their finances from taxpayer funds. In return, the establishment undergoes an in depth annual finances evaluation and state audits each 4 years.
Within the 2025-26 fiscal 12 months, the Lewis obtained $2.7 million in taxpayer help, up from $2 million within the 2022-23 fiscal 12 months, notes the Solar. The museum has additionally elevated personal donations by 11 % up to now three years.
Lewis president Terri L. Freeman and board chairman Drew Hawkins advised the Solar that they’ve destroyed all pre-signed checks and now retailer checks in a protected in a locked workplace.
The audit additionally discovered that greater than 9,000 objects within the museum’s assortment haven’t been correctly appraised, a requirement for insurance coverage functions. Auditors famous that this drawback has been cited in audits relationship again to 2013. Freeman tells the Solar that two interns are actually at work assigning worth to those objects.
“Of the 18 findings and suggestions raised within the audit, we now have already applied 12 of them,” Freeman advised the paper. “4 are in progress, and two others haven’t but began.”
Lewis Museum board president Terri Lee Freeman.
Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American Historical past & Tradition
The staff who made the fraudulent costs and who pocketed parking charges are now not working on the museum and weren’t recognized within the report, and neither Freeman nor Lewis may inform the Solar whether or not theft investigations have concluded or if legal costs had been filed, although auditors’ findings of potential theft had been referred to the Maryland Lawyer Basic.
“I’m very troubled by the dearth of accountability,” Republican state delegate Kathy Szeliga advised the Solar. “They clearly acquired into large bother with staff who had been pocketing cash. There clearly had been only a few controls. Having clean checks mendacity round and presigning checks is an invite for fraud, particularly with immediately’s digital cost techniques.”
Based in 2005, the Lewis is a Smithsonian Establishment affiliate and occupies an 82,000-square-foot downtown facility designed by architects Philip Freelon and Gary Bowden. Its assortment numbers greater than 11,000 objects spanning over 400 years, starting from a piano performed by jazz nice Billie Holliday, a Baltimore native, to a doll and cradle as soon as owned by a descendant of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who spent components of his life within the metropolis.
The museum is called for the primary African American to construct a billion-dollar firm, Beatrice Meals. In 1993, Forbes listed him as one of many 400 richest Individuals, with a web value of $400 million.
U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, stated in an announcement to the Solar that the museum is “an vital cultural asset in Baltimore with an important mission—chronicling the achievements and experiences of African-Individuals in Maryland.”
“Whereas the museum confronted monetary challenges up to now years,” he stated, “as an company supported partly by state taxpayer {dollars}, they have to proceed their efforts to reveal sound fiscal accountability.”
