I am Chris Jeffries, the Fine Arts Guide at The Mining Company. <http://finearts.miningco.com>. Background on my site is included below. I am preparing an article for late January on how art museums augment their collections. I am asking museum personnel to respond to the following questions: 1. How do museums go about deciding how they will augment their collections? 2. By what process are these decisions made, ie by committee, donors, or some other selections process? 3. How do museums decide which parts of their collections should be expanded, which artists to collect, and which particular artworks they would like to have? 4. How do museums go about deciding what their yearly budget will be and how much they can pay for a particular piece? 5. What is the average budget for a museum collecting activities for a medium sized US city? 6. How do museums identify contemporary artists they would like to collect? 7. Are museum people now surfing the net to locate new artists? What kinds of things do they look for? If you have information to contribute to this article, you will be given credit for your response. If you would prefer not to have your name mentioned, that is fine too. Please forward your responses by email to: [log in to unmask] Background: I write weekly feature articles on a variety of topics in fine arts for my Internet site "Fine Arts on the Internet at The Mining Company," at <http://finearts.miningco.com>. I also maintain a large collection of Internet links in 27 sub-categories in fine arts. I try to make most of my articles educational and informational. There are also several pages on Self-Promotion for fine artists. Generally, I display articles of interest to a very broad range of artists, art enthusiasts, art educators, and museum personnel. Some of these previous articles can be seen at <http://finearts.miningco.com/mpreviss.htm> where they are listed chronologically, and are also listed by subject at <http://finearts.miningco.com/mpreviss2.htm> Chris Jeffries Fine Arts Guide at the Mining Company <[log in to unmask]>