Wow.  Almost every museum professional that works in an institution that
rents space to outside organizations has a huge list of these policies!
Rentals can be a great source of income but require many hours of
careful thought on the part of museums, with some general areas that
concerns can fall into.

The most obvious ones involve safety to the objects on view.  For
example, restrictions on where food can be cooked, served or eaten, how
close to objects chairs and tables can be placed (or whether you will
even allow such in the exhibit areas!), and setting limits on how many
people each area will accommodate (these will be different if they are
seated or standing around cocktail-party-style).  You can also figure
out if you will allow renters to bring in live plants, and if so, are
they allowed in all areas or only in certain areas?

Another set of decisions involve who you will rent to. For example, we
have a policy that we will not rent to political parties for public
rallies, etc. unless we can give the opposing party the opportunity to
rent the same space for a similar purpose at the same price.

Perhaps the most controversial decisions you will make concern setting
priorities among internal space usage and renting to outside
organizations or people.  Assuming you will allow exhibit areas to be
used for weddings, for example, how far will you go to accommodate that
wedding--will you rearrange an exhibition to facilitate the wedding, or
will you design the layout of an upcoming exhibition so that weddings
(either pre-scheduled or scheduled after the exhibition is already up)
could take place there?  Are you willing to "censor" an exhibition so
that rental clients would find the space more acceptable for their
purposes?  (i.e., leaving floor space open for tables/chairs instead of
putting pedestals or furniture in the middle of a large area--or even
choosing your exhibition themes, subjects and topics to be more
"neutral" to avoid offending potential rental clients) Will you allow
the popularity of a particular space for rentals to curtail your
internal use of the space--for example, would you hesitate to schedule
board, committee or project team meetings for your best conference room
in preference to leaving it available in case a paying client wants to
rent it?  And the big one:  would you actually reschedule a planned
internal event if a big rental client wanted the date?

Another consideration is--who will handle the needs of these rentals?
We had to hire a new person to deal with the publicizing of the space
and to take bookings, work with rental clients, and organize staffing of
these external events and often be there for the events themselves.  We
also had to budget in the costs of giving that person a pager and
putting in a private phone line so rental clients could get hold of her
quickly--in the early days there were some communication shortfalls that
led to unsatisfied clients.  What about your building staff--are you
willing to pay them overtime or hire a new person to do the setups and
cleanups, which frequently occur on weekends and late at night?  Do you
have enough parking to handle 300 wedding guests (for example), or a
corporate meeting of 200?

Finally, you should try to predict the emotional stress of "caring" for
outside rentals that the staff will have to absorb and set your policies
to make it easier for them.  Wedding clients are notoriously
high-maintenance and can be extremely difficult to deal with, and their
demands have little or nothing to do with the museum's mission.  This
can frustrate dedicated museum professionals, who after all didn't join
their field in order to jump into the banquet-hall business!  Then there
is the issue of your gift shop--should they plan to be open outside of
regular hours to accommodate the shopping needs or desires of an outside
event (such as a Saturday evening wedding for 300?)?  If your shop is
staffed by volunteers you might not even be able to find people willing
to do this.

One of the things we have done is to think of rental clients and the
people they bring in as members of the "uninclined" audience--people who
might never have known of our existence until they came to this
non-museum-related event here.  We try to create the right kind of value
to their experience, maybe by distributing our brochures on their
auditorium seats or by having a staff member welcome the guests with a
five-minute introduction to what it is that we do.  You might actually
incorporate this as a requirement into their rental contract.

Speaking of contracts, there will probably be some new paperwork you
will have to invent.  The contract between the museum and the client is
one, as is some kind of internal routing paper to ensure that there are
no other conflicts on the proposed rental date.  (this conflict can be
as simple as a lack of chairs and tables to accommodate everything that
is going on that day!)  You will want to have some sort of standardized
setup chart for the building staff, and a line added to the museum's
event calendar to indicate any "outside" things taking place.  We also
have an "alert" slip to our receptionists indicating deliveries and
pickups that will be made. This is not to mention creating any
advertising to promote the use of your facility as a rental
space--printing and mailing brochures, taking out ads in local guides,
or even hosting a walk-through for local meeting and wedding planners.

As for pricing...look around at what similar spaces in town charge and
what they offer for the money.  We typically build in the costs of
hiring building staff and receptionists for events that take place
outside of regular hours, and ask that the client pay the catering and
tables-chairs-decorations people directly instead of through us.  We
also charge a hefty deposit and frequently have had to withhold it--one
wedding client brought in large candles (don't worry--it wasn't in an
exhibition area) and the melted wax spattered all over the carpet:  what
a mess!  We had to keep their entire deposit to pay for special carpet
professionals to spend a whole day getting rid of the wax.

We have found that corporate clients are the easiest to deal with--in
and out and they use existing equipment or bring their own, during
regular business hours, and they never want exhibition areas.  They
don't try to fuss with the price, and they tend to bring return
business.  They are also the most willing to listen to our 5-minute
"pitch", and often ask for (and pay for) an additional element to their
own activities that involves an arts program or presentation.

Phew.  I really got going there.  Anyway, this is some of the advice I
have based on hard experience.  Be prepared for conflicts and also be
prepared for compromises--from what I have heard this is the thing that
causes the biggest schism between curators and administrators, and can
actually lead to people quitting on principle.  But if done right,
rentals can increase audiences and income simultaneously.

Julia Muney Moore
Director of Exhibitions and Artist Services
Indianapolis Art Center

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