The AAM exposes its dubious authority to accredit museums by not
estabishing any criterion or advocacy concerning the protection of museum
employees from abuse either in substandard compensation or employment
definition.

Museum employees are understandably intimidated in such a climate and
desiring to hang onto the prestige of the job titles even if their
treatment as employees is less that prestigious. This timidity thwarts any
attempt at labor organization by casting it as beneath the class level of
those who aspire to the prestige level intimated by their job title if not
by their pay.  Low financial class workers with high social class jobs.
This dichotomy leaves museum workers open to exploitation.

Museum directors protesth too much.  Inflated salaries for development
people and directors is encouraged and yes board members do profit in
many, but not all, cases.

The misguided attempts to go along with the trend of privatization and
business model advocated by the head of AAM and others is short sighted
and leaves the opportunity for the further erosion of the profession.
Privatizing is placing more and more private collectors on museum boards,
many of which were balanced in the past with public servants or
representatives of the community, and these boards are then encouraging
the promotion of art exhibits that increase the value of their own private
collections.

The reduction of academic curators increases the wine and cheese view of
authenticity and programming.  Museum directors are no longer content to
be so and are now being called presidents and vice-presidents.  More and
more non-musum personnell are hired to oversee development goals and
eventually funding opportunities control programming decisions. There are
a myriad of examples in museums that are being privatized and aligning
themselves with the business model from Orange County to New York.

But you all know this. It is time to demand that AAM either resign its
accreditation power or enforce a comprehensive overview of all aspects of
the well being of the museum and not only those which promote the growing
number of aspiring business executives and private collectors.  In such a
validating move of its basic mission, AAM, would develop separate
accreditations for museums in rural communities such as Indian
reservations and Southern communities so that the majority of museums in
the US, the small museums, would not be unfairly stigmatized as being
unworthy because they cannot afford the technologies available to a  few
large museums.

AAM cannot simply take the gravy anymore than can directors, development
staff, and private collector/board members.  Directors can lead an era of
fairness by taking a reduction in their salaries to be within a reasonable
percentage of their employees and guarantee that salaries for all
employees are comensurate equally with their education and experience.
There is no reason why a person with an MA in the development office
should make more than a person with an MA in any other part of the museum.

Best,

Paul Apodaca