>    Good news about the article you are planning on museums that
>overestimate on attendance.  I hope that you will include the Valentine
>in that article.  I know that this situation is not entirely parallel
>to the Baltimore one, but the most interesting situation of all really
>is the one in which a museum, having just undergone a major expansion,
>almost immediately implodes.  Are they cases of poor planning (they
>forgot that it's easier to raise money to build things than to operate
>them) . . .

Or, is the Valentine a case where totally inadequate market research (or,
none at all) led the museum down a path doomed to failure?  Perhaps
enough time has passed so that an objective article on what happened at
the Valentine could be written.  Certainly seems to be an object lesson
for us all.

Oh, and John Strand:  You might want to consider writing something on the
trend for public museums to "privatize".  Although the Milwaukee "Public"
Museum is perhaps the best example, there are plenty others, including a
prime example in SD.

Claudia Nicholson
Curator of Collections
Museum of the South Dakota State Historical Society
Pierre

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