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 It would be outdated now anyway.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. ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).