great reply, Bear; you're sounding highly professional & responsible!  Need
cover letter to IMS NLT July 14!

----------
> From: Barry Dressel <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Overselling Museums
> Date: Monday, July 07, 1997 11:19 AM
>
> I am so glad someone has finally raised the overselling issue. I was
deputy
> director of Baltimore City Life 1976--1983, and planned both "Rowhouse"
and
> Museum Row. (I seem to recall my projections for attendance being around
> the 60,000 mark, but I could be wrong.) During that whole time the then
> mayor, William  Donald Schaefer, was encouraging museums in Baltimore
> because he wanted "attractions". The problem was that there were already
> too many museums for a branch office town to support. BCL got itself in
the
> position of hoping that an inflated gate would bail them out, even as the
> city "privatized"/dumped the museums. It did not help that BCL, as city
> support dropped, did not itself  shed responsibility for sites that only
> added to staff levels and other overhead costs,  without delivering
income
> or attendance, such as the H.L. Mencken House. But that's neither here
nor
> there. Any museum I know that depends on attendance that it alone will
> attract (as opposed to being in a location that will deliver
indiscriminate
> bodies, dead or alive) seems to come to grief.
> Look at the bodies. The Valentine (recovering nicely, we hope), Western
> Pennsylvania, Cincinnati, among others, plus a a whole group of places
> where low attendance complicates other problems. All these places were
> superb operations tarnished by their inability to deliver attendance
> sufficient to pay the bills.
> That said, museums should not be in the business of promising high
> attendance,to break even. They are high overhead propositions and always
> elitist, in the sense they must educate as well as entertain. To go after
> high attendance is to enter a costly race with other "attractions" which
> can't be won--and in losing, that is, failing to reach over-optimistic
> attendance levels, we create the illusion that we have failed. In the
> process excellent museum directors keep getting bumped, mostly because
they
> are vicitims of circumstances. Someone said to me at AAM, what other
field
> allows itself to kill off its best and brightest?
> Barry Dressel, Turks and Caicos National Museum, Grand Turk, Turks and
> Caicos, British West Indies
> ----------
> > From: Helen Glazer <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Overselling Museums
> > Date: 07 July 1997 22:01
> >
> > Matthew White <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > >>While preparing a reply to John Strand I reread the _Baltimore_
> article
> > in Museum News while I kept up on the development of this thread and as
> > my mental processes trudged along it occurred to me what it was that
> > made
> > that article so disturbing.  It was that it depicted the Baltimore as a
> > city with those same rose-colored glasses and overly optimistic
> > visitation/revenue forecasts the rest of you attribute to individual
> > museums...<snip>
> >
> > Matthew, I'm glad you said it, and you've said it well--I hope you send
> > the complete text of
> > your comments to "Museum News" because they need to hear it there, too.
> > I've been following the stories of the Baltimore City Life Museums and
> > other planned museums in the Baltimore Sun, too, not to mention the
> > city's fiscal woes, and my response to that "Museum News" piece was
that
> > there were no outright lies, but some disturbing omissions.  There are
> > some exciting things happening at Baltimore museums (and alternative
> > spaces, too), but whose interest does it serve to ignore the dark side
> > of the picture?  Around the time that the article came out, Baltimore's
> > Walters Art Gallery had taken the unusual step of stationing people
> > inside the entrance handing out fliers urging citizens to lobby their
> > city council representatives to help save cultural funding, which the
> > mayor had threatened to drastically cut.  The author couldn't have
known
> > that at press time, but the city's financial problems are not a new
> > story.
> >
> > I have read with interest the perceptive comments of others on this
> > topic about how museums get into these predicaments.  I started
thinking
> > about how this thread raises many questions.  One is about
> > growth--Museums and museum
> > directors make their reputations on growth--more museums, major
> > acquisitions, new wings, etc.  Does this need to be questioned more?
> > Are these types of growth always the ultimate measure of success?  The
> > other question, which others on the list have spoken about, is about
> > marketing.  The aspect of marketing that I am thinking about is exhibit
> > evaluation and visitor studies--spending more time and effort finding
> > out from the visitors why they are at the museum, what they are getting
> > out of the experience and what would bring them back for more, rather
> > than *thinking* we know the answers to those questions.  Even a very
> > modest visitor evaluation that I conducted on a project yielded some
> > suprising information that defied the conventional wisdom of seasoned
> > museum professionals.  This leads back to my first question--can
visitor
> > surveys help us to expand upon and perhaps redefine what success
is--not
> > just looking at the tangible aspects like new buildings and bigger
> > budgets, but what people are learning and what the museum adds to their
> > "quality of life"?
> >
> > --Helen Glazer, Exhibitions Director
> > Goucher College
> > Baltimore, Maryland USA
> > [log in to unmask]