Dear Susan,

Well good, you found somewhat of a solution to the confusion. :)

Being a "collecting" museum has some interesting problems (such as
running out of storage space, increased insurance risks, need for
professional staff to care for the collection); but by nature a
non-collecting museum would seem not to have those issues; au contraire!
You still borrow collections and l attend to the insurance risks related
to borrowing (so you need a registrar), you still need someone (a curator
maybe) to write those labels and an exhibit designer to design those
wowie shows!   And you still need the storage space to hold items when
they come and go!

This has been a fascinating discussion, and it really boils down to
"traditionalists" being more flexible in their thinking about such
facilities as non-collecting ones because the procedures followed in care
of collections are still the same as with collecting facilties.

O
www.nixonlibrary.org
Yorba Linda, CA
(714) 993-5075

On Tue, 18 Apr 2000 09:31:45 -0700 "Susan B.F. Wageman"
<[log in to unmask]> writes:
> On Monday, April 17, 2000 5:49 PM, Olivia S. Anastasiadis
> [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> wrote:
> > I remember when as a grad student we discussed the issue of
non-collecting facilities; I noted that for the most part,
non-collecting agencies distinguished themselves as "Center" or
"Gallery."  This may seem like a simple solution, but it didn't work for
us. The Tech Museum of Innovation used to be called The Technology Center
of
> Silicon Valley.   People were confused. They thought we were a
convention center  (where you find trade shows). This is what the word
"center" means in our region. By using the word "museum" in our title,
people have more of a clue what we are about. Yes, some people still are
confused ... but not quite so many.  FYI - The Tech's exhibits and
experiences focus on contemporary  technology. We use objects to
interpret our themes, but we are not a collecting
> institution.
> Susan B.F. Wageman
> Evaluation Manager
> [log in to unmask]
http://www.thetech.org


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