I managed online communications during the renovation and reopening of the National Museum of American History.  I'm happy to chat with you about our lessons learned--although I realize that the size of our institutions varies greatly.

This topic was the focus of my graduate research while in the Museum Studies program at The George Washington University.  You can find a PDF of "Closed to the Public: The Impacts of Closing a Museum for Construction" here: 
http://danamuses.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/closedtothepublic.pdf (A big file so it may take a few minutes.) In it you will also find a list of other museums that have recently undergone similar renovations--a great place to start calling folks.

You might also want to take a look at these slides from "Construction Site to Museum: Managing the Opening Process" at last year's AAM meeting.
http://www.slideshare.net/danagreil/from-construction-site-to-museum-managing-the-opening-process-american-association-of-museums-2009

I also highly recommend that you look through the Building Museums conference that is put on by the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums each year.  You'll find a list of recent projects and folks who you might want to follow up with. Next year's conference will take place in the spring in the San Fransisco area.
http://www.midatlanticmuseums.org/buildingmuseums.html 

Best,

Dana Allen-Greil
t: @danamuses
e: [log in to unmask]

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