Dear listmembers

Thank you for the responses to my question about the "ciritcal size" of museums. Maybe I'll have to go a bit further into detail. I of course totally agree with the view that most of you expressed, that it is first content and the creation of interest that counts, especially in the planning of a new museum. Size comes afterwards.

But I would still defend the idea that size matters to a certain extent. The problem we are dealing with here is that in a quite restricted area there are situated a number of mid-size museums: a history museum, a natural history museum, the Swiss Museum of Communication, the Swiss Alpine Museum and a contemporary art gallery. These museums are reasonably staffed, their budgets are ok (that still means to low of course), their collections are big enough to create interest on a large scale. None of this fairly successful museums however can on its own offer visitors an experience that would make a longer trip for a day-out worthwhile. And that has to do with size, facilities and a variety of offers to visitors. My aim would be to make my neighbouring museums understand that we have to work together much more closely. Because then the "critical size" can more easily be obtained. In order to give a bit of weight to what I am driving at I wanted to know if anyone had any idea about what "critical size" in a museum context could mean. I know that things like that are being discussed, I simply don't know precisely who is actually discussing it and what the results of this discussions might be.  And to be clear once again: I am actually talking about square feet or square meters even though I know that this is a somewhat reductive and rather basic approach.

Thanks again

Thomas

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Dr. Thomas Dominik Meier
Director
Museum of Communication
Helvetiastrasse 16
3000 Bern 6
Switzerland
T: +41 31 357 55 10
F: +41 31 357 55 99
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