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Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
https://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=33370		 Page 1 of 3
Author:  Dingo [ Tue May 29, 2012 9:30 am ]
Post subject:  Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
We have various discussions about what should be preserved, and what we are capable of preserving. We discuss what is the duty of a museum to care for artifacts, etc., etc.

Zoos face the same situation, and are now deciding that some species just cannot be saved. Most would agree that letting a species go extinct is a lot more serious than allowing some inanimate object decay into oblivion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/science/zoos-bitter-choice-to-save-some-species-letting-others-die.html

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/science/zoos-bitter-choice-to-save-some-species-letting-others-die-637916/

The railroad preservation community may be at the same point. Perhaps we need to collectively look at what we have, talk to each other, and decide who can preserve what. This is part of the museum profession, refining your collection policy and focusing on what must and can be preserved. That which your institution cannot preserve should go to a new home. It is very satisfying to take something of value which does not fit your mission, and get it into the hands of a museum whose mission it does fit.

For example, I am involved with the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum. Obviously, our mission focuses on Maine two foot narrow gauge equipment and history. We have all sorts of objects and documents that concern standard gauge and narrow gauge railroads outside of Maine. We are slowly but surely going through these items and trying to find them good homes. If no museum or other non-profit wants them, we sell them and use the money to maintain our collection.

Many railroad museums have more "stuff" than they can adequately maintain. Just as Zoos' have more species than they can adequately preserve.

Museums' and Zoos' both face some bitter choices.
Author:  Mark Z. Yerkes [ Wed May 30, 2012 5:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
This is a very interesting topic, especially now, since you can find in various places on this site alone posts about how museums need to start picking up more modern equipment, such as SD40-2s and F40PHs, so they don't miss out, like with certain steam locomotive models. You really have to think about what is important and what needs to be saved.
Author:  dinwitty [ Wed May 30, 2012 9:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
Some things just were not, did not get preserved and the hand of fate takes over.
We're very lucky to have 3 N&W 4-8-0's saved when a nearby Y6B took the torch.

Others do not exist but do in model form, like me with an HO model N&W Jawn Henry.
Many more Big Boys are saved than engines from other railroads. Some groups pop up to take on preserving equipment. Illinois Railway museum keeps plugging to get equipment under cover. You just keep plugging and do what you can, thats about the way its been since the interest started, since the streetcars and steam engines started dissappearing. Now see what... 8-D
Author:  Brian Norden [ Thu May 31, 2012 1:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
I was once in a conversation with a friend and spoke of the museum's railway serving to provide the public some idea of what the equipment was like in service.

The rejoinder to me was, "Ah, a zoo for streetcars!"
Author:  Dennis Storzek [ Thu May 31, 2012 8:17 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
That's odd... I always considered a zoo to be a jail for animals.

Here in the western suburbs of Chicago, we have what I suppose is the nationally acclaimed Morton Arboretum. A number of years ago, an acquaintance who went on to be the editor of one of our hobby magazines refereed to it as, "the tree museum."
Author:  wesp [ Thu May 31, 2012 11:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
Quote:
You really have to think about what is important and what needs to be saved.


This begins with adoption of a collections policy.

Wesley
===
From Recommended Practices:

http://railwaymuseums.org/Static/documents/RecommendedPractices.pdf

5. Collections Stewardship
Railway museums, like all museums preserving and utilizing collections, should strive to adopt and follow accepted standards in caring for these collections and assuring their long-term survival.
5.1 A comprehensive, written Collections Management Policy must address all aspects of the institution's collections, and relate care and treatment of collections back to the institution’s mission.
1. Written collecting criteria includes:
a. What the museum will collect, and why
b. How each collection will support the museum's mission
c. How each collection and its individual items will be used and cared for (e.g., research, display, operation, education, outreach, etc.)
Author:  Dave [ Thu May 31, 2012 12:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
Dennis Storzek wrote:
A number of years ago, an acquaintance who went on to be the editor of one of our hobby magazines refereed to it as, "the tree museum."


Did they charge you a dollar and a half just to see them?

dave
Author:  superheater [ Thu May 31, 2012 1:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
"Zoos face the same situation, and are now deciding that some species just cannot be saved."

If a species exists only in a zoo, and not in the wild, it is in a very real sense on a slow road to extinction. The isolation from environmental stressors, will over time make it impossible for the animal to be returned to the wild.
Author:  Alexander D. Mitchell IV [ Thu May 31, 2012 2:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
Dave wrote:
Dennis Storzek wrote:
A number of years ago, an acquaintance who went on to be the editor of one of our hobby magazines refereed to it as, "the tree museum."


Did they charge you a dollar and a half just to see them?


Why the hell not? The greenhouse "across the street" from me, part of a city park, "suggests" a "donation" of $2 (and higher during special events) just to look at the plants inside:

http://www.rawlingsconservatory.org/

The "tree and garden museum" just a little ways outside of town charges $10 just to wander the grounds, more for house tours and special events:

http://www.ladewgardens.com/
Author:  Dave [ Thu May 31, 2012 3:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
Generation gap.

dave
Author:  wesp [ Thu May 31, 2012 3:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
Dave,

"Don't it always seem to go" that way?

Gotta go put up a parking lot.

Wesley
Author:  robertmacdowell [ Thu May 31, 2012 3:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
Dave wrote:
Generation gap.

Yeah I know, it was a classic song from a glorious age of music, and you couldn't have lived through that time without hearing that song 1000 times on the radio. Counting Crows rocked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtJPs8IDgU
Author:  Mark Z. Yerkes [ Thu May 31, 2012 4:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
Good song
Author:  robertmacdowell [ Thu May 31, 2012 4:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
Dingo wrote:
We have various discussions about what should be preserved, and what we are capable of preserving. ... Many railroad museums have more "stuff" than they can adequately maintain.


"do" is not the same word as "can". You used the wrong word here.

Einstein said you can't solve a problem with the thinking that caused the problem.

Quote:
The railroad preservation community may be at the same point. Perhaps we need to collectively look at what we have, talk to each other, and decide who can preserve what. This is part of the museum profession, refining your collection policy and focusing on what must and can be preserved. That which your institution cannot preserve should go to a new home.

How will shuffling the equipment around will reduce weather damage?

You suggest we have overcollected, but true to Einstein, you have attempted to draw a solution from the same mentality: "Collect, collect, collect!" Moving equipment around is just more collecting, but it does nothing to address that other mission of museums: preservation.

And this is where your metaphor with the zoos breaks down. Zoos can't preserve a species. We can, and in some cases, do.

The other thing that troubles me is the unspoken elephant in the room: "Well, I did whatever the hell I did, and my care was the best humanly possible, by definitin, because I am a god of preservation and none dare question my commitment. Therefore if it didn't survive in my hands, it was beyond human help, what a shame, boo hoo." Note the absolute cowardice and lack of responsibility contained therein. Note also the self-constructed box and the refusal to think outside that box.

I call this argument "We don't need no stinkin' car houses"

Didn't we just hear it was gonna cost $36,000 to move a car from Indiana to Ohio? Well let's say just for argument that the average move costs $10,000. IRM spends about $200,000 on a carbarn that covers 20 cars.

Which is a better investment of $200,000?
- Move 20 cars
- Cover 20 cars
Author:  Bob Davis [ Thu May 31, 2012 4:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Museums' Face a Bitter Choice
The original of Big Yellow Taxi is by Joni Mitchell; the band I follow here in the LA area sometimes "covers" it during their "Seventies Sessions" gigs. They'll also do Free Man in Paris.
Getting back to the subject of museum organizations, a museum I've belonged to for many years originally followed the model of a railroad or transit agency, because that was what the railfans who founded it were familiar with. As time went by, the leaders realized that we weren't in the common carrier transportation business. One member paraphrased a GE slogan into "Nostalgia is our most important product". Another suggested that we were more like a zoo than a railway, providing a habitat for endangered electro-mechanical species. We have finally evolved to where we have a "mission statement" and "accession/deaccession policies", and are mindful of "provenance" and "historic fabric."
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