Hi,

When I worked in teh anthropology department at a large natural history
museum in the west we would do behind the scenes tours by advance
appointment (with a museum admission upcharge) for adult groups only in
just a couple of our storage rooms.  The curators had pre-selected the ones
we would do -- ceramics storage and large stone artifacts, others,
especially our NAGPRA storage, were strcitly off limits.  Generally we only
did the tours in the afternoons so that in the morning we could put away
what we were working on, tidy up, a pull out a couple of "show & tell"
artifacts.   To ensure that the creeping hands would be adequately covered
(you KNOW several people WILL touch) we issued every person white gloves
that they had to wear for the duration of the tour. We collected them at
the end and washed them before the next tour.

I was just a grad student at the time, but gave the majority of the tours
with a volunteer or our ethnology curator.  They were very popular and some
groups, like Elderhostel, booked every year.

-- 
*Michelle Zupan*
Curator
Hickory Hill & the Tom Watson Birthplace
502 Hickory Hill Drive
Thomson, GA  30824
706-595-7777
FAX: 706-595-7177

Visit us at www.hickory-hill.org or on Facebook
<https://www.facebook.com/hickoryhillmuseum>.
Follow us on Twitter: HHEducation

Historic homes of the Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc
<http://www.watson-brown.org>.

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