A belated thanks to Museum-L.

   The Diversity by Design conference came off as planned (for the most
   part) on Friday, November 3rd. It was better attended than we had
   originally hoped, with 325 participants. About two thirds of the
   audience were museum staff, and the remaining third designers or
   museum/design students.

   The panelists were uniformly superb, in dramatically different ways.
   A few provoked controversy, which for me was one of the best parts of
   the conference. I can't resist recounting George Covington's advice to
   designers. George is legally blind, and railed against exhibit
   designers who sacrifice legibility to other aesthetic considerations.
   To designers who want to exercise this aesthetic leeway, the most
   polite variant of his advice was "go sell shoes." I must add that the
   designers in the audience presented a very creditable and
   sophisticated defense of their profession and their aesthetic
   prerogatives.

    Others panelists recounted the inside story of fascinating and
   diverse projects, including "Mining the Museum" (Fred Wilson), "Teen
   Tokyo" (Leslie Bedford), The Mashantucket Pequot Museum (Mike Hanke),
   The Lower East Side Tenement Museum (Renee Eps) The Brooklyn Children
   Museum (Carol Enseki).  Others discussed new media experiments,
   including Rob Semper of the Exploratorium, and David Tarnow, an audio
   producer.

   Particular thanks to the panel moderators Susan Yelavich and Sam
   Taylor. They were real pro's.

   Ralph Applebaum delivered a real stem-winder in his keynote. In his
   own thoughtful way, he conveyed a passionate conviction about the
   importance of museums to this society.

   By the end of the conference, I felt genuinely proud that I am part of
   the museum profession.  The way that museums are dealing with their
   responsibilities to their audiences, to their collections, and to
   their interpretive missions is, at its best, creative, generous, and
   thoughtful.

   The New York State Council on the Arts is providing funding for a
   transcript of the conference. I will make some attempt to edit this
   transcript and post it on some FTP site or another, and give all our
   museum web sites URL's to link. That'll take a few months.

   Many of the ideas behind the conference were germinated here on the
   list, and a show of hands indicated a fair representation of
   Museum-l'ers among the participants. For both of these, my thanks, and
   thanks from the Museums Council of New York.

   Eric Siegel
   The New York Botanical Garden
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