Museum Funding Inquiry

   A museum of the steel industry!  Sounds like it could be great...hope
   its in a town where steel manufacture was important.

   Get a group of concerned citizens together to form "The friends of the
   steel museum" .  From these folks, raise the bread to do a good
   professional, thorough feasibility study (please note adjectives).
   There are many here who can provide recommendations for a planning
   consultant.  If you will, according to this study, have the market (ie
   audience), and funding base, then start a nfp corporation: The so and
   so Steel Museum." with a board of directors and everything.  These
   folks should be instrumental in designing a program for the museum.

   Then find a space that fits that program, then start doing analyses of
   what kind of work needs to be done to that space and how much
   exhibits will cost (capital costs), and how much it will cost to run
   the joint (operating costs).  We hope that you are in Pennsylvania,
   and have at least a congressman, if not a senator, on your side.  PA
   is famous for government works.  Get the feds to fund the building and
   name it for appropriate public official.

   I can practically guarantee you, without going through any of that
   rigamarole, that it will cost *wayyyy* more than $250,000 in capital
   costs to renovate a space to do a museum, at least if you are in the
   USA.

   There are some museums, I've discovered on this list, that do fund
   themselves through earned income, though I've never encountered one in
   the flesh.  For the most part, we need subsidy, and lots of it.  Why?
   That question is the product of our times, where the market is the
   final arbiter.  We need subsidy because art, art music, history,
   literature are not successful in the marketplace.  We are generally
   not sufficiently successful in "competing for leisure dollars" with
   the mall, the movies, and the TV.

   Been a long time since I posted, so pardon me for being windy.

   Eric Siegel
   [log in to unmask]

   BTW:  Last chance to register for Museums Council dinner at the NY
   Historical Society on Thurs 3/13.  Contact me for registration info
   tout de suite if you would like to come.