Dear Erin,

Just try to run a museum, large or small, urban or rural without those
Federal tax dollars!   We need the NEA and NEH and IMLS and those federal
granting programs, even though the procedures are so cumbersome.   The
regranting programs that NEA and NEH do on the state level, for the state
councils, are really important, especially to small town museums, like the
one I run.

We need more not less money.  We're still feeling the hit in Georgia from the
NEH
cuts a few years ago -- we used to get $25,000 grants; now we get $9,000 if
we are lucky per project.

RE: SENSATION.   The problem is our American culture's love affair with slick
marketing and our tabloid mentality.   SENSATION was SENSATIONAL to get
ATTENTION from the media. If you're not a scandal, the media do not pay
attention.  Of course, I don't advocate being SENSATIONAL. in the manner of
SENSATION  since I run a history museum, not a contemporary art museum.   The
commercialization of SENSATION -- the collector's bit about selling the
pieces and generating the hoopla so that the prices would be higher -- that's
what really bothered me.   We're in the museum not the commercial gallery
business.   There's a line there, a boundary.

The other good thing about federal grants is that they are sort of a Good
Housekeeping Seal of Approval.   Local funders, corporate funders, wake up
and see that the museum where you work, the one that is struggling to survive
and doing
really innovative programs, actually is credible.  If you can compete at the
national
level, local support is improved.  Nothing succeeds like success!

Good luck with your survey.

pamela sezgin
Executive Director
Georgia Mountains History Museum

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