The Museums Council of New York City met yesterday evening at the American Museum of Natural History. It was one of the best meetings that I've ever attended. A quick report follows(with the ulterior motive of getting people who have not come to meetings before to come to the next meeting on March 26 at Fraunces Tavern.) The Museums Council of New York City is an association of virtually all of New York's not-for-profit museums. We currently have 86 member institutions and are constantly reviewing new institutions for membership. The group has been in existence since the 1950's, and at this past meeting Betty Scholz (Chairman Emeritus at Brooklyn Botanic Garden) told me that she had been Chairman of MCNYC in the mid 1960's. We meet every six weeks or so at a different museum in the City, usually with a gallery tour, drinks, and dinner (we charge $25/attendee). The Museums Council produces a directory of its member institutions listing upcoming exhibitions, admissions information, and a directory of staff (in the case of the larger museums, only senior staff are listed.) The Directory is for sale for $5.00 + 1.00/order for postage. Member institutions also receive a limited number of passes which admit their staff and a guest to other institutions within the group for the entire year. In short, it is a wonderful organization, quite informal but very effective at getting museum staff off their duffs and into other museums here in NYC, Museum Central. This past meeting at AMNH gave members a private viewing of the Nature of Diamonds exhibition and a talk by the exhibition's curator, followed by quite a lavish dinner in the Astor Turret Room. This is the empty round room in the otherwise dense new dinosaur halls at AMNH. We were limited to 60 participants, and the meeting was "sold out." The Nature of Diamonds is a curator's (in the traditional sense of a content expert with academic credentials) exhibition, really substantive, and anything but the "glitter" show that one might have expected. I'm sure that curator, who is a geologist (his name escapes me unfortunately) felt that he edited out 99% of what he would like the public to know about his field. Even so, it has more information in text, graphics, computer generated images, old film footage, and interactives, than any 10 exhibitions that I've seen recently. Though there was some debate about how well all this text worked, with some people thinking that it was just too dense, I personally loved it and thought it was an ambitious exhibition about a subject which might have lent itself to being just kind of glamorous. And glamorous it was as well, with the highlights for me being two objects: Peter the Great's crown, studded with diamond, which must have weighed 40 lbs if it weighed an ounce, and an exquisite 1st century image carved in rough sapphire (using diamonds to do the carving, tho how they know that...). Also, I'm told, the world's second largest diamond. There were too many other wonderful elements in the exhibition to list. It was designed, beautifully, by an in house team that included Gerhard Schlansky. I'm told that it is going to travel, but I have no idea where to. Anyone within travelling distance of any of the venues has to see this exhibition. So, the next meeting of MCNYC is at Fraunces Tavern on March 26th. The exhibition there will be about New York City after the departure of the Dutch and before Independence. Can't promise it will be as dramatic as AMNH, but it should be compelling on a different scale (I have thoughts of mulled wine, punch, shepherds pie...) Hope to see some of you there. Eric Siegel Chairman The Museums Council of New York City Director, Planning & Program Development New York Hall of Science