We also had a wonderful exhibit on Native Americans at the Utah State Historical Society (when they had a musuem long sad story). We did have issues with pest but it was worth it the visitors had a great time with the mano and metate which were historic to the area. The clean up was the key all docents who ended their tours at that exhibit were expected to clean up and we had the tools assigned to that area to make it easier for them plus we let the custodian know the issues around that exhibit and he/she were a bigt help in keeping the exhibit area clean. 
With a bit of planning it goes well and the issues are few 


Think  "green" before printing this page. 

C.A.Sneddon, Ph.D. 
U of U 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Kavanagh" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 6:09:37 PM
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] corn grinding interactive

Back in the ‘90s, for an exhibit on a Mexican household, we included hands-on corn grinding. I loaned my hand-cranked mill (Mexican-made). We strapped a plastic 1/4 inch mesh across the hopper for safety. For a substitute mano/metate, we begged some milled slabs from a local quarries; our preparator rigged up a slant-box. Our corn came from the feed store. It was up for about 8 months. It was not directly supervised, i.e., not in clear sight, but we had no problems. There was no insect problem, but we did have to keep up with maintenance, and replenish the corn supply. 
tk

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