It would seem museums and their exhibit designers all have enough
character within themselves that copying of exhibits is unlikely.

On the other hand, if a museum comes up with a wonderful design for a
particular exhibition (kudos to the California Historical Society) and
another museum regionally close has an exhibition thematically similar
or offers the proverbial "another side of the same story" and uses the
original design as inspiration for their own- it might help visitors
learn better by virtue of the fact they will remember the first,
assuming they visited the original, and begin to think more indepth
about the particular issue at hand.

I for one would love to see regional museums, particularly medium to
small sized, collaborate on a year-long(?) series, possibly be a great
grant-writing project, and offer a particular issue with relatively
similar design but from different perspectives given their respective
collections.  Strength in numbers might help educate the public better
than sporadic individual exhibitions in some cases, although they too
are extremely valuable.  It would also seem that if we are in the
business of sharing information, via the exhibition, competing over
something like the copyright of the exhibit structure is contradictory
to our mission; is it worth our time, really to worry about something
like this?

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