The Museums Council of New York met last night at the New York Historical Society. The place looks wonderful, a real contrast to the image presented over the last few years in the professional and general press. Betsy Gotbaum, the Director, greeted us graciously and announced 1 and 1/2 interesting news items. The first is that NYHS has received a $7.5 million grant from the Luce Foundation which will enable them to bring their collection back in house, after some period where it lived in a warehouse in Manhattan. They have hired a project manager who is a very experienced and very pleasant museum professional (his name escapes me at the moment, though we spoke quite a lot). The second 1/2 interesting item is that "there is something that will be announced next week of equal or greater importance than the Luce program." From what she suggested it sounded like a major collaboration or partnership with an existing institution, not the Museum of the City of New York (she clarified). Jack Rutledge (I think, I'm bad with names), who is the Director of Exhibitions and Collections (worse with titles), spoke about the deaccessioning fracas. I won't go into detail in this description, but he certainly conveyed two points: 1) the deaccessioning was critical to the survival of the institution; 2) that it was conducted thoughtfully and carefully with an eye toward distributing items that were not part of a reasonably broadly defined mission statement. Then we had a rich and fascinating tour of the Audubon exhibition that has been traveling around the country and recently returned to the Society. Jack emphasized that the Society is not primarily an art museum, so the exhibition is re-cast as a social/historical exhibition, with art objects at its core. As an example, he recounted Audubon's personal story surrounding his various failures in business and his apparently sudden decision, at 35, to leave his wife and two children to get on a boat to paint all of America's birds. Jack also emphasized the work behind the artifacts, both the fieldwork and the artwork, not to mention the work of JJ Audubon's wife at home raising two children with no money... I should point out that the watercolors (which also include various media like charcoal, pen, shellac, collage) are very inviting and impressive as art objects as well. Then, we had dinner. It was a large convivial group of nearly 60 museum people representing 18 institutions. I hope that you will join us, if possible, the next time when we meet in April at the Jewish Museum to look at their exhibit, Points of Entry, (I think its called, bad with exhibition titles, too) about immigration. We have published our annual directory, which has staff listings for all of the 81 member institutions, as well as exhibition schedules for the coming year, admissions, etc. It's a big job to get together, and it is available for sale ($5 to members, $10 to non-members) from Marcia Rudy at the New York Hall of Science (718)699-0005. Plans for a web site were recently initiated, and we'll keep you posted. Eric Siegel Chairman The Museums Council of New York