Hi All,

I've been struggling with the same notions. In my small town there are at
least 6 museums with a 7th in the plans. My museum is the general history
museum. In just the last 2 weeks two of the museums have wandered way
outside their mission/niche with events/lectures, etc. In addition, one of
the niche museums actually took credit for my museum's major fundraiser in
their quarterly newsletter. (It's an annual citywide event that's been going
on for decades!) In both cases, these museums have such a narrow niche that
there's virtually no room for growth or expansion. In order to host a
lecture or workshop series, both of these groups have to really search to
find fresh topics. If all of the resources and volunteers were pooled we'd
have a fabulous multi-building institution. Alas, internal/infernal
politics, etc. will never allow for more than an uneasy alliance. 

There is a case for niche museums, however. Folks who are passionate about
one of the niches are much more likely to support the niche museum with time
and resources than a general museum, especially if the niche museum is truly
unique and reaches beyond it's own community for support. And if you're
passionate about widgets, it's very powerful to see thousands of widgets in
a niche museum, rather than a dozen in the general history museum. 

I'll be interested to hear what others think.

Becky Fitzgerald

-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of C Reeves
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 11:06 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: My museum can beat up your museum... blah blah blah

Braggarts and others,

Ok, so we've got lots of museums nice and centrally located for everyone's
benefit, so what?

Do you mean to tell me that none of those museums overlap in purpose?  Do
niche museums interfere with general purpose museums or vice versa?  Is the
Rock and Roll museum/hall of fame really useful if the subject is taken out
of context with what was/is going on concurrently with the music?

Will we eventually break down into a niche market? For example: The
Northeast Hat museum, the Seattle museum of Rain Gear, etc. 

So NYC, London and others have a cabinet load of curiosities, are the
stories being effectively told spread out as they are, or is there a message
being lost to the masses?  

Just something to ruminate on.  Have a nice day,

Christopher Reeves

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