Why are we discussing this?

Because it demonstrates how much money is actually "out there" and how other museums apparently operate without restraint even now that the economy is seriously misfiring. Now of course its worth noting that being associated with, on the board or being a conspicuous donor to an art museum is something of a status symbol and conveys an air of sophistication.

It should be something of a "benchmark".

Yes, I would tend to agree. I don't care if you agree with them buying and moving a rock. They probably have $10 mill canvases hanging in there as well. That's how art works.

What we should be discussing is where they got the money. Was it public funding? Private grants, donations, winning lotto ticket? Once you figure that out, ask yourself how your pet project can do the same, whether that be the Society for Preservation of Pet Rocks or your local railway museum.

It was made clear in news reports about the "big rock show" that the project was financed by private donations. Had an organization attempted to use tax money for what many of us would call a "fool's errand", the fiscal conservatives, and a lot of other taxpayers, would have been furious. (terms like "going straight up and turning left" and "having a cow" come to mind). One of my favorite expressions that covers a lot of situations is: "Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it should be done.
A modern light-rail project that I follow closely here in Southern California is the Gold Line Foothill Extension. It will build a double track electric railway from East Pasadena to Azusa, following the former Santa Fe route. An important part of the job is building a new bridge across the 210 Freeway on the western side of Arcadia, replacing a structure that was considered to be seismically unsafe. Construction is moving along, with "falsework" for the concrete placement taking shape right now. What has some people upset is that the final part of the bridge will be "decorative elements" inspired by Native American baskets. I've had to do some fast talking, explaining that somehow the "arts community" had enough "clout" to have public-works legislation include "public art requirements", so bridges, stations and other parts of transit railways and, for that matter, other public projects have to include artwork that may not conform to many citizens' aesthetic tastes. My usual comment is that artists must have a strong union in order to have this requirement, which generates criticism out of all proportion to its expense. (preservation note: The historic former Santa Fe station in Monrovia is scheduled to be restored by the City of Monrovia as part of the project.)

As Superheater noted, the point is that there is money available for a project that is properly "packaged", but we are our own worst enemies when it comes to fund raising...we are parochial and fail to tie our efforts to a larger societal context and purpose (one beyond hugging and operating trains).

The example that immediately comes to mind is the Sunbeam:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=2683415

True, the car is not in a railroad museum, but it is accessible to the public, beautifully preserved, presented and protected not only physically but economically by its residence at Robert Todd Lincoln's Hildene Estate.

We are losing ground in the fight to preserve our unique heritage every day, because we have not emulated the other successful historic preservation models and non-profit funding strategies. Railroad museums are important, but artifact preservation is vital, because the loss of the critical artifacts threatens our history and the very institutions that were established to sustain it.

If Thomas the Tank Engine has taught us nothing else, we should have learned that the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily following the same path we have been following for 50 years. Before someone gets in the pulpit, I am NOT arguing that Thomas is a solution, just an example.

Craig Brinkman
www.arpcp.org

I think it might be smart to bring up the words of Jim Boyd during the creation of Steamtown Scranton and Steamtown NPS back in the 1990s.

Critics of Steamtown NPS as a concept often acted with what could realistically be called envy at the government's appropriations for the park. Boyd reminded all that Steamtown's advocates did not "steal" money from other, more "worthy" rail preservation projects, but rather, Scranton's advocates and politicians "created" the money where it hadn't existed before. (This is a totally separate discussion from whether any Federal monies should be spent on rail preservation, and/or in what manner/locations.)

It's the same way with this rock-art project. Someone out there managed to "sell" the idea of spending this kind of money on such a "ridiculous" project. It's on the same par as the British developer that paid for the erection of a brick, life-sized "realization" of an LNER A4 Pacific at speed in a plaza--a project that, as I recall, consumed about as much money as the total rehabilitation of 2-3 of the real things cost or would have cost.

Yes, the "art world" apparently has "more money than sense." But we, as rail preservationists, must concede that we have a "marketing problem." And part of that has to do with the basic fact that you can't take possession of a locomotive or train in the same way that you can a car, a boat, a motorcycle, a buggy, a bicycle, or a truck.

Art is perception. This rock is a joke, but monied people have perceived it as an enhancement to the community. Part of that perception is the "performance" part of the project, the moving of the chunk, which everybody who comes to admire this slab of lithosphere will "ooooh and ahhhh " at. The same people will not be "moved" by a Union Pacific "Big Boy" unless they are brought about to admire precision machining and the harnessed expansion of water.

Probably the performance part will come when all the cockroaches come out at night with their spray cans.
I'm just a heathen and don't understand the abstract art. We have a rusty steel mess in downtown St. Louis called the Serra Sculpture but in reality it's a place for the winos to relieve themselves against and couples to hide for some quick action. I don't know if this eyesore upsets me or the people who pretend to "understand" it but someone paid through the nose for it.

As I said in the previous thread, most of us are not even playing the same game. 1. Develop programs, facilities, and exhibits with broad popular appeal (start small). 2. Stack your board with One Percenters. 3. Successfully raise big money for worthy projects that improve the museum's ability to attract visitors.

LACAMA has plenty of sense. They get over 900,000 visitors a year, including myself at least twice a year. I don't necessarily like everything there, but I don't see the advantage of calling folks with different tastes idiots. I'd say they are doing something right. Haters gotta hate, and this board has plenty of them.

This thread was started to discuss what railway preservationists could learn from the fact that art museums continue to do well during this very slow recovery. The answer is that they actually attract lots of visitors and they get heavy hitters on their boards. I do not see why railway museums could not do the same. I mean, I kinda know why they don't, but that doesn't mean they couldn't.

As for "more money than sense," there are plenty of examples in our world, but unsurprisingly, a lot of these examples benefit more private pursuits. Tornado, Jerry Jacobson, RDG 2100, etc...

I made the original point on this thread because if art museums, historic building preservation associations, and others can raise $10M for moving rocks and restoring buildings, etc. so can we. But we can't do it by repeating the practices of the past 50 years in our "historic art form".

Ray and several others have rightly pointed out that you go for the 1% and community WOW. Art museums have the advantage that they are display mostly small, static, visually different things...while we could argue that we do that too, the public sees them as "just a lot of big rusty things". In case anyone missed it, the biggest drawback we face is that we are sustaining industrial history and that is not a popular obsession...

There is a reason that the operating side of "our obession" consistently draws bigger crowds...it evokes the experience of the past and provides a current diversion, whether its having dinner in the diner, waving at Thomas, or meeting new folks and watching world go by.

One of our principal problems is that our "experiences" are not located to attract visitors. We do surprisingly well considering some of our locations and not every group can have a venue in downtown Sacramento, Baltimore, LA, etc. As in real estate, location, location, location...but that is not the only answer.

Discussions here will help us all understand how we can look past our own "formulas" and create more successful paradigms of fund-raising, preservation, and operation.

Craig Brinkman
www.arpcp.org

Exactly! I totally agree with you, and think you're on the right track.

Here's something to help put things in perspective. This is from 2010, but it's the best I could find with a quick Google search. It's from an article in the Los Angeles Times regarding the LA County Museum of Art.



$87 million in spending for one year. $87 million... Kind of puts that $10 mill rock in perspective, doesn't it?

Also, consider this. Aren't we talking about the rock? Sure, we may think it's crazy, stupid, a waste of money (The same thing the art crowd might say about grown adults playing with trains) but we're talking about it. We might even be inspired to stop by and have a look. If you were an art lover, you might be inspired to donate.

After all, it's only a rock, but the installation, with the rock hanging over your head as if to crush you at the next earthquake, is what's going to make it "ART". You don't judge the value of the Mona Lisa on the cost of canvas, paint and shipping, do you? People all around the world are saying "What's the deal with this rock?" They're getting a lot of publicity out of it, that's for sure!

What's your favorite museum/tourist railroad doing to inspire donations and get folks talking about them?


(On a side note, did anyone tell them that for $10 mill, they could have hung the 2100 over people's heads? Heck, they could probably even have gotten the design drawings at a discount from the Casino...) </snide comments>

The LA Rock made it into the Wall Street Journal today.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... ljournal_2

Well here is a little something that has to do with both art and trains and ridicules amounts of money. Jeff Koons (mention his name to almost any real artest and you will get a gag reaction) Came up with an idea for a piece of "artwork" called train. It would be a full size crane supporting a full size replica of a steam locomotive The Annenberg Foundation donated $2,014,500 "to support Phase I for the planning study of Jeff Koons' sculpture, 'Train' that will be displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art". For that money we could have gotten a real steam locomotive running.

Does this forum gain anything by saying "if we could have raised X amount of money we could have restored artifact Y"?

I'd rather see less threads here on how to spend other people's money and more discussion of restoration projects that fellow preservationists are currently involved in.

Does anybody have a copy of his grant proposal. Art seems to be about 95% marketing and telling a "story" about the object or it's manufacture that is engaging and exciting and; most importantly, "different" from what everybody else is doing. If one took the Louis Vuitton engine and car and could create an artistic story about them---you'd get somewhere. If one was gifted and willing to be edgy, there are some interesting things that could be done with Pullman, the porters, and heavyweight sleepers--mind you as a one shot installation or perhaps in a multimedia milleu.

Serious out of the box thinking could yield object restoration and interesting art--but it won't provide the short term satisfaction of the rail enthusiast market--but then if you can rebuild a T-1 or an Dreyfuss hudson (two of the more "arty" engines I can think of) who really cares what the railfans think?

This hanging locomotive proposal has been around a while; perhaps there is a lesson in persistence here?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22372

This subject of raising money has been brought up before as well:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32164&p=164302&hilit=art#p164302

There must be some lesson we can learn. . .something that can work. . .we sure can use it, whatever it is. . .