Emma McCartney writes

> Or, like me do you feel that the visitor
> does matter and indeed without them the Museum is missing some of its
> potential vitality. Some may even say that without the visitor why have an open
> Museum but clearly that's another debate- perhaps for the future

I cant imagine that there can be really opposing views on the subject
for a museum administrator, tho I guess I could imagine a collections
person seriously raising this question.  But of course visitors are the
core of the business.  Even if you were able to develop some sort of
conceptual rationale for having a museum without visitors (the Barnes as
the classic american example), it is impossible to create a functioning
model of such a museum (the Barnes is again a good example).

Of course there are real questions about the degree to which a museum
shapes its operations around the visitors experience, the balance of
resources devoted to that aspect of the museum, etc.  We, at the New
York Hall of Science are making a real effort to focus on making the
visitor experience more satisfactory.  We have to (and want to) because
"visitors" have so many options for their saturday afternoons.

I don't imagine coming up with a set of written standards, tho that is
an interesting idea. Are there any other such things you know of in the
museum world?  I know disney does this very intensively.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Eric Siegel