I can assure you that you are not the only museum in the world that does
not allow photography. We have a complete ban on photography in our
museum due to the fact that many of the Maori treasures we have on
display are owned by local Maori families and they have requested no
photography. Like yourselves, it is much easier to impose a blanket ban
than to try to allow photography in some galleries and not others.

It is usually accepted by our visitors who appear more interested in the
reasons why (which our FOH staff are well trained to explain) than the
fact they can't take photographs. I should also say that not only do we
not allow photography but we don't allow visitors to actually take their
cameras or video cameras through the museum. This causes more grief to
be honest but overall not a big deal. We also get the odd visitor who
claims this is the "only museum in the world" that that doesn't allow
photography to which we sometimes feel like replying "wow, we must be
unique, isn't it amazing that you found us then!" Very occasionally we
refund admission to disgruntled visitors who won't part with their
precious cameras and that is fine too.

Regards

greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of heather smith
Sent: Wednesday, 2 June 2004 7:55 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: visitor photography in museums


Help! - I want to get advise about allowing photography in our museum
and art gallery. For 25 years we have had a no photography rule. It just
seemed too complicated to allow flash photography of some things and not
others. Then when modern flash didn't seem to be a big problem anymore
the complicated copyright issues became a new reason not to allow photos
to be taken. Today we made a visitor from Washington State very unhappy
with us because we would not allow him to take photographs - we are
apparently the only museum in the world who is still not allowing photos
to be taken of our exhibits. Is this true??? What are your policies out
there??

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