I have been reading the e-mails regarding the value of a museum to its community and while in my opinion museum's are the most valuable items in the community. I would like to add another "value" situation to this.

My museum is swinging the other way. Recently in the last couple of years, there has been a movement amongst our members as well as the city officials who help to support the museum that we need to merge our history museum with the children's museum. The reasoning is that the community cannot support two museums and that it is unfair to ask people to give to both so therefore we would be better off having one museum for all to support. To this end the over all support of our museum by its members and the community leaders has started to wane to support this idea.

Needless to say this has caused a major rift in the community and we are currently in the midst of a war of words appearing daily in the paper. The division is not over the issue of regardless or not the merger is right or wrong but over but who has control, the people who want us to merge and those who do not. Neither one however are willing to support the museum. Those who want the merger will walk away and those who do not want the museum to remain the same with very little support coming in to retain the statuesque. The funny thing is that everyone is saying that what they are doing is the best thing for the museum and that this is supporting both museum in the best manner possible.

There is more to this but that is the general idea. I have repeated this as a means of the pendulum swinging the other way when people truly believe that the are being strong supporters and are doing the best for their museum when in reality well right now I am not sure what the reality is but it being describe in the papers daily.


Henry A. Poore
Director
Iredell Museum
Statesville, North Carolina
Phone: (704) 873-4734 Fax: (704) 873-4407

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