>Subject: [Fwd: New Museum Opening in Las Cruces]
>Date: Saturday, January 18, 1997 6:57AM
>
>[ AzTeC / SWA SASIG ] :
>
>[ The nearby Natural History Museum allows guests to use the museum
>computers to access the Internet, thus drawing additional visitors....,
>hmmm...., what might happen if museums offered Internet e-mail accounts and
>other services to regular visitors and subscribers.... -- SASIG Ed. ]
>
>The Las Cruces museum scene, which already ranges from science to art and
>from the Old West to the Space Age, is about to add another member. Sometime
>this spring, the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum will open its
>doors, letting its visitors follow the history of agriculture in the state.
>The museum will differ from other Las Cruces museums in that it is intended
>to bring tourists to Las Cruces. That's something the other museums do not
>try to do. Instead, said Christina Trowbridge, director of the Las Cruces
>Natural History Museum, most Las Cruces museums try to serve the local
>community. The Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum won't ignore the Las Cruces
>community, said Ellen Campbell, museum marketing director. But the main
>focus of the museum -- to trace the state's agricultural history -- should
>draw people from across the state, she said. "We want to be a destination
>point," Campbell said. The Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum will be the largest
>agricultural museum in the country. It will also be the first one built in
>the past 20 years. The facility will be east of Las Cruces, on the road to A
>Mountain and Dripping Springs.  Work there is going quickly, and Campbell
>said museum staff expects to move in beginning in early January. The staff
>is waiting for money from the Legislature to finish buying display cases and
>finish the interior work. The museum will have 21,000 square feet of space
>in its grand exhibit hall  -- or, as Campbell said, 10 times the space found
>in a normal house. The exhibit hall will include a model of a Mogollon pit
>house. Other parts of the museum will house a gift shop, a restaurant, an
>outdoor amphitheater, a working blacksmith shop and an outdoor exhibit of
>the livestock prominent in New Mexico ranch history, including sheep,
>longhorns and horses. There also will be a full greenhouse, where the museum
>staff will grow chile, cotton and other New Mexico farm products year-round.
>The museum also will have an outdoor market where farmers can sell produce.
>"Their facility is very impressive," Trowbridge said. When the Farm & Ranch
>Heritage Museum opens, there will be 10 museums in the Las Cruces area. That
>includes art museums, such as the Branigan Cultural Center and the
>University Art Gallery, space museums such as Space Murals and the White
>Sands Missile Range Museum, and history museums such as Fort Selden and the
>Gadsden Museum. Most of the area's museums have banded together in the
>Mesilla Valley Museum Consortium, a group that works together to promote
>themselves. Museums in the consortium distribute fliers promoting other
>museums, hoping visitors to one museum will be tempted to visit them all. As
>Campbell said, none of the museums really competes with the others. "We're
>all really different," she said. If the experiences of other museums holds
>true for the Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum, once it's built, visitors will
>come. Trowbridge, whose Natural History Museum sits in 2,000 square feet in
>the Mesilla Valley Mall, said her staff counted 89,000  visitors last year.
>She says that count is low -- visitors are counted by hand, and the counting
>isn't always done. Las Cruces museum visitors tend to be loyal. Trowbridge
>said she has a strong base of people who visit the museum frequently. Among
>them are children and retired people interested in browsing the Internet on
>the museum's two computers. Trowbridge said many of the retired people who
>come in aren't familiar with the Net or what it can do. "I get a lot of
>satisfaction -- and the staff does, too -- out of teaching people how to use
>it," she said. The Natural History Museum wants people to touch many of its
>exhibits. Campbell said that philosophy also will be a feature of the Farm
>and Ranch Heritage Museum. Already, the museum has collected almost 7,000
>agricultural artifacts ranging from books and saddles to horse-drawn tills
>and furniture. Museum collections manager Toni Laumbach said more material
>is arriving daily. "Every time we go somewhere, people give us more stuff,"
>she said. A short tour of one of the museum's  warehouses finds a wide range
>of memorabilia, ranging from a tractor-pulled plow to small items such as
>plates and silverware. Most are old. Many are very old. For now, Laumbach is
>just checking donations in and warehousing them. When the building is
>finished and ready to occupy, she will begin the process of writing up
>display information, and the museum staff will decide what will become part
>of the permanent display and what will be rotated in and out. That process
>is planned far in advance. The Natural History Museum, for example, has
>planned its exhibits through 2000. Almost all the time available for special
>exhibits has been booked. Campbell said people are genuinely interested in
>the Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum and can't wait for it to open. One
>interested group is the Southwest Environmental Center, whose members wonder
>what emphasis will be placed on environmental displays. But Kevin Bixby, the
>center's director, also wonders why the museum picked its location. The
>museum will be on East University, outside city limits. Campbell said that's
>because of the livestock. City regulations would not allow the museum to
>have live sheep and other animals within city limits. Bixby said the city
>and museum should have tried to reach a compromise to allow the museum to be
>closer to people, even if that meant the museum abandoning its plans to have
>live animals. "This is a major museum," Bixby said. "Do the people out there
>want longhorns nearby?" Being outside city limits has one drawback -- the
>museum will not be on any city bus route. Campbell said she hopes the museum
>can work out a deal with the city so bus service can go there.
>
>http://www.zianet.com/lascrucesbulletin/archive/11.28.96.museum.htm
>Las Cruces New Mexico Farm & Ranch Museum: New Farm & Ranch museum takes
>shape -- Staff expects to move in to largest ag museum in country in January
>By Doug DesGeorges
>
>
Anita Cohen-Williams
Information Specialist
Auto Club of Southern California
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