I did a similar project once. The equation goes something like this: (I did not post this to the rest of the list--if yo think others would find it useful, go ahead and do so.) First figure to determine: Cost of storage space. Take the total square feet of your entire facility (including exhibition and office space) and divid it by the total amount of rent/payments paid on the whole facility, including property taxes--this gives you a cost per square foot for all spaces at your museum. Second, you determine the number of square feet in the storage facility portion and then useing your above cost per square foot figures, determine the cost per square foot for the storage space alone. By the way, if you have large portions of your collection on permanent display, you will need to play with the figures to reflect an accurate space allotment. This gives you a cost per square foot figure for storage space only. Second Figure to determine: cost of professional staff, misc. Then you factor in other things: Percentage of wages per hour to care for the collection (including paper work, etc.); cost of appropriate shelving and racks to store the work; insurance costs; and so forth. You will need to use your best judgement in some cases (remember, this is only an estimate). Add this amount to your first amount. Third figure to determine: Cost of care for each object, on average. Finally, you divide this above figure by the number of items in your collection and thus you determine an average cost for care per object per year. It is actually kind of a fun project to undertake, but also time consuming. John Handley