Good Afternoon Jenna,
Please excuse a moment of silliness...........
Maybe the museum's response ought to be to charge them for the privilege.  Sure....., you can use you photo/cellphone for a daily flat fee of $25....or $50 bucks!  And if you catch'em in the act......make 'em pay. Oh, and by the way, museum members should get a big discount......better yet, museum members can use their photo/cellphones at no charge....as long as there are no flashes and no tripods.  On second thought, there ought to be a $100 charge for using a tripod.  By the way, how come museums don't charge seniors the least and kids under 5 years-old the highest admission ticket price (say like.... $20 a kid), after all when was the last time you had a senior visitor screaming her head off and disrupting the exhibition area?
All silliness aside, sometimes we should consider capitalizing (or at least tolerating) these kinds of customer satisfaction issues, such as using cellphones to shoot (non-flash) pictures inside museums.
Wesley

Wesley S. Creel
Administrator of Programs
Pink Palace Family of Museums
3050 Central Avenue
Memphis, TN 38111-3399
www.memphismuseums.org
(901) 320-6370 Direct
(901) 320-6391 FAX

>>> [log in to unmask] 06/02/04 07:14AM >>>
For those museums that ban photography in their exhibit spaces, how do you
think new types of cell phones will affect those policies?  I was monitoring
a fashion photography shoot recently in one of our buildings and realized by
the end of the shoot that the fashion designer was not talking on the phone
but was photographing our collection.  At this point, I doubt the quality of
the image is enough to make a huge fuss but now there are video recordings
associated with phones and the technology is advancing dramatically.  Some
of these phones are so small that staff may not notice them on tours.  Will
we end up searching purses and frisking visitors before they enter our
museums!!?

Also, I understand the copyright issues associated with photography in art
museums.  How are history museums dealing with this issue on a continual
basis, especially historic house museums?

Jenna Carroll-Plante
Canterbury Shaker Village, NH


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