Ask the Museum Girl

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

[QUOTE=RTA]
How often is the museum you work at open to the public, how many new exhibtions are installed every year, and is that museum accredited by the AAM?
[/QUOTE]

We’re open year-round. In the summer, we’re open six days a week, but only on weekends in the winter. That’s when we install new exhibits.

We have several revolving exhibits which change about twice per year. Things are constantly changing and improving. Putting in permenent exhibits is a very slow process, (the last one we opened took nine years to complete). We’re working on a couple of new ones now.

No, we are not accredited by the AAM. I don’t know why-- I went to the website and it seems that we meet the criteria. I’ll have to ask my curator.

22

Now you’ve piqued my interest! :eek:

23

What is the ratio of paid staff to volunteers? Do you have a board of directors?
And if all guests are escorted by staff, then you are only open for tours, yes? How much does that cost? & Where does the museum get most of its funding? Discuss.

24

[QUOTE=Lissa]
See, I’m a very literal person, and I don’t know if you’re teasing me or not . . .
[/QUOTE]

I can’t imagine why he would be teasing you. I, for one, am very surprised. Had you mentioned it before?

25

[QUOTE=Priceguy]
What is your museum’s ratio of items displayed vs items in storage?
[/QUOTE]
For comparrison, visiting the Smithsonian back in the early 80s I’d read they had 69,000,000 items, of which no more than 1% were on display at any given time. It’s probably even a smaller percentage now.

26

[QUOTE=RTA]
What is the ratio of paid staff to volunteers?
[/quote]

We have a few volunteers who come in on a regular basis to help in the archives, and occasionally, we get a college intern, but almost everyone working there is staff.

We do.

And if a

Most of the time. A few times a year we have an “open house” in which visitors can wander around on their own. Staff people are stationed all throughout the building to keep an eye on the artifacts.

All admissions are less than five dollars. Kids are free.

Most of it comes from private donations. On occasion, we apply for grants for certain projects, but the lion’s share comes from the donations we recieve.

Our board has to approve all expenditures and they squeeze every penny until Abe Lincoln squeaks. Not that this is a bad thing-- they’re just very careful with our funds, as they should be.

27

Hey Museum Girl, if you show me your collection, I’ll show you mine. :wink:

28

[QUOTE=Bear_Nenno]
Woh, I had no idea you worked in a museum. What’s your husband do?
[/QUOTE]

:smiley:

29

[QUOTE=Lissa]
He insists people would be squicked by the dead baby pictures.

[/QUOTE]

He IS aware that most of your photos are of dead people, too?

How DO you lift a Mummy’s curse?

30

[QUOTE=Unintentionally Blank]
He IS aware that most of your photos are of dead people, too?
[/quote]

Well, yeah, but they’re not dead in the picture.

Very carefully. Wear gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. :wink:

31

Ever had someone get so “into” a display that they tried to get themselves locked in, in order to just be “part of it”?

Yeah, it was me. Back when I was like 14, I went to the museum in Columbus Ohio, and there was a pioneer exhibit consisting of a cabin and all its furnishings. My cousins took me there that day, and there were many other interesting artifacts, but I kept coming back to that exhibit.

I don’t know why, but I just kept thinking that if I could spend the night in there, I could “transport” myself back to that time.

I wasn’t going to lie down in that bed or hurt or steal anything, I just wanted to sit on the floor and maybe touch some of those old things, and just be “with” them, ya know?

Anyway, I got found and got a really stern lecture, but for a little while, I felt like I was a member of that “family”.

This “weirdness” followed me into adulthood, and once while touring a castle in Germany, I touched the chain mail which once belonged to a knight. This time I asked permission. :smiley:

Anyway, has that ever happened in your museum?

Thanks for this interesting subject.

Q

32

No questions, but this was really interesting Lissa, thanks! It really does seem like a fascinating job and I’m sure your good at it because you seem to enjoy it so much. I really do envy people that get so much pleasure out of their work.

33

[QUOTE=Quasimodem]
Ever had someone get so “into” a display that they tried to get themselves locked in, in order to just be “part of it”?

<snip>

Anyway, has that ever happened in your museum?

Q
[/QUOTE]

Why do you think I work there? :smiley: I get to play with all the cool old shit.

To answer your question seriously, I did have one vistor who sort of “lived” in one of our exhibits. At least once a week he’d show up and he only wanted to see one room. He’d go in there and just wonder around, staring dreamily at the items in the cases. He was a real expert on the things in that room and I learned a lot from him. After a while, we started trusting him enough to leave him alone in there. I’d go up every now and again to check on him and find him sitting against a wall, just feasting his eyes. I begged him to come and work for us, but he had too much on his plate as it was.

34

I was a Museum Boy back in the 80’s and 90s. I miss it. I agree that museums are fascinating places to work,

Enjoy!

35

[QUOTE=Quasimodem]

Yeah, it was me. Back when I was like 14, I went to the museum in Columbus Ohio, and there was a pioneer exhibit consisting of a cabin and all its furnishings. My cousins took me there that day, and there were many other interesting artifacts, but I kept coming back to that exhibit.

I don’t know why, but I just kept thinking that if I could spend the night in there, I could “transport” myself back to that time.
[/QUOTE]

You just described the plot of Ruth Chew’s Summer Magic, one of the first books I ever purchased with my own money back when I was in grade school. :stuck_out_tongue:

36

[QUOTE=Bear_Nenno]
Woh, I had no idea you worked in a museum. What’s your husband do?
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Seven]
Your hubby works in a prison?
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Maeglin]
I can’t imagine why he would be teasing you. I, for one, am very surprised. Had you mentioned it before?
[/QUOTE]

I think that’s quite enough of that.

37

[QUOTE=SkipMagic]
You just described the plot of Ruth Chew’s Summer Magic, one of the first books I ever purchased with my own money back when I was in grade school. :stuck_out_tongue:
[/QUOTE]

Man! I could have written that book? Cool! That museum trip was in '63.

Wonder how many others have had real-life experiences they later saw described in a work of fiction?

Q

38

Of the exhibitions that are shown, what is the ratio of items that come from that in-house collection only, and how often are items on loan from other institutions? … How often does the museum loan out items to other institutions, if ever?
Are travelling exhibitions ever shown? If so, what sort and how often? What kind of insurance bond does the museum have? … What is the most valuable item in that collection, and what is it?

39

[QUOTE=Quasimodem]
Man! I could have written that book? Cool! That museum trip was in '63.

Wonder how many others have had real-life experiences they later saw described in a work of fiction?

Q
[/QUOTE]

I’ve read interviews to several writers claiming to have seen their stories in the news. Some, after the story was published (Giovanni Guareschi for example); some, before it was (John LeCarré mentioned this conundrum in an interview on a Spanish magazine just last sunday).

I’ve come up with theories/ideas/designs for experiments that someone else had “copyrighted” years before. Oh well.

40

[QUOTE=RTA]
Of the exhibitions that are shown, what is the ratio of items that come from that in-house collection only{?}
[/quote]

99% of them. On occasion, we’ll run a special theme exhibit and ask for loans from the community if or collection is sparse in that area. As an example, last year we had a all-school “Class of 1946” reunion in town. We decided to do an exhibit, but as my curator said, it would have been easier to do an exhibit on 1846. (People never think we’ll be interested in “modern” items, so they don’t think to donate them.

We really don’t like to borrow. It’s stressful-- we have to worry about getting all of the items back to their owners and we have to be even more careful than usual. If we scratched an item of our own, it would be a tragedy, but God help us if we dented someone’s football trophy.

Hardly ever from other museums.

That happens frequently.

Last week, another museum sent us a catalogue of an exhibit they’re doing that prominently features one of our pieces. We all crowded around the catalogue, exclaiming and squealing. It was like seeing one of your kids in a magazine or something.

Nothing like the King Tut exhibit that’s going on at the Field Museum right now. Whenever we have shows featuring other institutions’ pieces, it’s usually a very limited one-day-only event in which the employees of that place are in charge of their own stuff.

It’s rare, and it’s usually something like a quilt exhibit or some sort of demonstration.

I’m a bit fuzzy on this, so I can’t answer it fully. I know pieces are insured when they’re loaned out, but there’s no way we could carry loss insurance on every thing in the museum. We could never afford the premiums, and in a way, it’s kind of pointless. We could never replace most of those items, anyway. (How do you replace something that’s one-of-a-kind or something which is made valuable by its provenance?)

That’s almost impossible to answer. There are so many items which are literally priceless that I couldn’t even hazzard a guess.