After Audit, Baltimore’s Lewis Museum Says It’s On Road to Compliance

Leadership at the Reginald F. Lewis Maryland Museum of African American History and Culture in Baltimore is working to address issues uncovered in an Aug. 15 audit by the Maryland Department of Legislative Services, The Washington Post reported. baltimore sun.

The audit found serious irregularities. It found that the charges on the museum’s corporate credit card had “no apparent business purpose.” It discovered two instances of payments being made to employees’ PayPal accounts. A former employee instructed visitors to pay him for parking in person and keep the cash. The museum has a practice of pre-signing some blank checks for emergency use and storing unsigned blank checks in an unsecured office.

Only a small amount of funds, totaling $10,115, were unaccounted for between April 2021 and January 2025. The museum’s annual budget is $6.3 million.

The Lewis Museum is a quasi-governmental arena institution and the only museum in Baltimore classified as such. sunwhich noted that taxpayers provide half of the museum’s annual budget, while most other Maryland cultural groups receive less than ten percent of their budgets from taxpayer funds. In return, the agency conducts a detailed annual budget analysis and state audit every four years.

The Lewis family noted it received $2.7 million in taxpayer support in the 2025-26 fiscal year, up from $2 million in the 2022-23 fiscal year. sun. Private donations to the museum have also increased by 11% over the past three years.

Lewis President Terri L. Freeman and Board Chairman Drew Hawkins told sun They had destroyed all pre-signed checks and stored them in a safe in a locked office.

The audit also found that more than 9,000 items in the museum’s collection had not been properly assessed for insurance purposes. Auditors noted that the issue had been raised in a 2013 audit. freeman told sun Two interns are now assigning values ​​to these items.

“Of the 18 findings and recommendations made in the audit, we have implemented 12 of them,” Freeman told the newspaper. “Four are ongoing and two have not yet started.”

The employees who made the fraud charges and charged the parking fees no longer work at the museum, and were not identified in the report, and neither Freeman nor Lewis could tell them. sun Whether the theft investigation has been concluded or whether criminal charges have been filed despite the auditor’s findings regarding the potential theft being submitted to the Maryland Attorney General.

“I’m very troubled by the lack of accountability,” Republican state Rep. Kathy Szeliga told reporters. sun. “They clearly create big problems for employees who steal money. There are clearly very few controls in place. The ubiquity of blank checks and pre-signed checks invites fraud, especially in today’s virtual payment systems.”

The Lewis Museum was established in 2005 as an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in an 82,000-square-foot downtown facility designed by architects Philip Freelon and Gary Bowden. Its collection of more than 11,000 items spans more than 400 years of history, from the piano played by Baltimore native and jazz great Billie Holliday to the dolls and cradle once owned by descendants of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who spent part of his life in the city.

The museum is named after Beatrice Foods, the first African American to create a billion-dollar company. 1993, Forbes He is listed as one of the 400 richest people in the United States, with a net worth of $400 million.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said in a statement to the Senate sun The museum is “an important cultural asset of Baltimore with an important mission – to document the achievements and experiences of African Americans in Maryland.”

“While the museum has faced financial challenges over the past few years,” he said, “as an institution supported in part by state taxpayer dollars, they must continue their efforts to demonstrate good fiscal responsibility.”