This post, and the Bailey post to which it refers, are thoughtful and
valuable, but I think they skirt the central issue of sponsorship. Years
of observation of the Smithsonian, an institution whose reputation for
intellectual integrity once was unquestioned, have persuaded me that there
is no way to keep sponsors at arm's length. First you shake hands, then
you hug, then by degrees the intimacy grows until you're in bed together;
and there's no such thing as being a little bit pregnant.

A small museum run by an autocrat might be able to maintain its
independence, but in a major museum where ambitious executives and
curators are always jockeying for position, bringing in a bag of money is
a well-known way of raising your pet project's priority. But few donors
act purely from generous motives, especially businesses, and most
especially corporations, which have to answer to stockholders and want to
see some bang for their bucks.

If you want to see the ultimate result of such a process, visit the New
Mexico exhibit at the National Museum of American History. It amounts to a
tourist travel office, which is the way the project was sold to, among
others, the NM state legislature, a major donor. They got what they paid
for.

It's a slippery slope, and as one who has had a lifelong passion for
museums, I am saddened and sickened to see Caesar's wife go careering down
it, struggling vainly to keep her skirts from sliding up over her private
parts.


      Hank Burchard * <[log in to unmask]> * Washington DC | USA


On Thu, 8 Aug 1996, Harry Needham wrote:

> George Bailey raises some important issues, with which we, the AWM's "oppo" in
Canada, are also grappling.

I see no objection to NAMING a hall or gallery after someone associated with a
MAJOR sponsor, or the sponsor itself, particularly where the sponsor has had a
major association with the subject matter of the heritage institution to which
it offers sponsorship. If General Motors of Canada, for example, were to want
to sponsor our Second World War gallery, I would have no strong objection to
calling it the "General Motors of Canada Second World War Gallery", PROVIDED
THAT there is NO interference of any kind on the part of the sponsor with the
content. We had a development director (now gone) who tried to attract just
this kind of spoonsorship, but with promises of a permanent GM exhibit in the
gallery, etc. As soon as this was known to my colleagues and I, we put a stop
to that little offer pretty quickly.

I would have trouble with an ethnic association or other narrow interest group
sponsoring a gallery devoted to the contribution of their community in war, as
every other group would then ask, "Where's our gallery? Is there only a gallery
for the big spenders? I thought this was supposed to be a NATIONAL museum?!"
etc. It is clear that we could not have a gallery for each and every group (nor
should we - the museum would look like a little dog's breakfast!).

George also asks how long the name should last. This is a very important point.
My own feeling is that "naming" should be for a finite period of time, say, 20
years. When Ottawa finally got its National Hockey League team back (after an
absence of many years), it was at the cost (among many others!) of building a
huge new arena, initially called "The Ottawa Paladium". A year later, it became
the "Corel Centre" (three guesses why!) and my understanding is that it will be
so named for a 20 year term. This seems reasonable.

We don't name small components of exhibits, such as dioramas and cases; I think
this would be a bad practice. In our new gallery "Canada's Peacekeepers", we
placed a small label to the side of the diorama or whatever indicating its
sponsorship and, at the end of the gallery, we have a large text panel thanking
all the sponsors and naming them, with their logos. This is as far as I am
prepared to go, with respect to the bits and pieces.

And, yes, I very much agree with George that there should be a clear
understanding on the part of the staff as to what the name means and why it's
being applied to a particular museum component, such as the "MacDonaldie's
Memorial Restroom" or, for the colleagues down under, the "Hungry Jake's
Cloakroom".