The Bishop Museum in Honolulu has an open storage area (Betty Tatar would
be a good contact).  The Logan Museum of Anthropology at Beloit college
(Jane Ketchum would be a contact there) has an open storage display as
well.  Maybe someone from these institutions can provide insight into their
design, use, public response, storage pros/cons, etc.  I particularily
liked the open storage at Beloit primarily because it is basically a two
story glass cube within an exhibits area.  Inside the cube is a collections
work area on the first floor and storage room on the second floor with a
small bank of compactor shelving.  A small "dumbwaiter" elevator provides
access to these areas and to the basement storage rooms as well for the
movement of artifacts (not people, its just about the size of an artifact
cart).  They have moved their North American collections here so that they
can use the work area as a consultation room for artifact viewing with
direct access to all collections right there.  As far as the exhibit part
of the open storage, they tried to address the concerns of light damage by
installing special lighting which I don't know the specifics of.  I find
open storage areas to be a very interesting concept surrounded by as many
good solutions as problems posed.   Just some thoughts!

Angela Steiner Neller
Curator of Collections
Ill. Trans. Arch. Research Program and the Laboratory of Anthropology
Department of Anthropology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
103 Horticulture Field Lab, 1707 S. Orchard St.
Urbana, IL  61801
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Ph: 217-333-0263
Fax: 217-244-7458