There was a museum I worked for about 8 years
ago that had a museum center with exhibits and
a historic village.  We had birthday parties in
one certain home in the village.  I don't remember
what we charged.  It would be outdated now anyway.

What I do remember is that we had a village
interpreter host the party.  Only reproductions
or items marked for educational use were used in
the party area.  The interpreter served the food
(sometimes brought in by the parents and sometimes
cupcakes and punch furnished by us), supervised
games and crafts (also furnished by us), and gave
a free tour of the village.  The parties had a
theme: cowboys, tea parties, doll parties,
etc. and did not always relate to our village.  We
started out small, but the idea really snowballed.
There were times when we did three or more parties
a day.

We also had parties in a conference room that was
located in one of our exhibit galleries.  As curator,
I hated these parties.  The director and board
were against barriers that would prevent party-goers
from roaming throughout the galleries.  Children
would run through the gallery and several times came
close to knocking artifacts off of pedistals.  Food
crumbs were found throughout the galleries.  Whatever
was missed in cleaning up after the party could
easily be found the next day by the trail of ants.
Party-goers would set food on exhibits or touch
exhibits with sticky hands.  It wasn't that they
intended to be distructive.  They would just forget
that they were in a museum.

At first I tried to get everything under plexiglas,
but there wasn't enough money in my budget for that.
I then expressed my concerns to the director, but
since the parties brought in needed extra income, the
director and board weren't about to do anything that
might inconvenience them.  The best I could do was
block off other galleries and restrict the one
adjacent to the conference room to reproductions and
a few real artifacts placed too high to reach or under
plexiglas.

Parties can be a real money-maker, but you have to be
sure that in the quest for extra funds you aren't
putting at risk the very artifacts your museum was
formed to save.

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