What definition are you using to determine what is a museum? Who gets to judge what does and doesn't qualify?

Here's the definition of museum:


Now I'm certain there's some sort of Association of Museums out there that will provide accreditation to facilities that meet it's definition of a proper museum, and the Tuba Museum will most likely not qualify.

But does that really mean it's not a museum, or does it simply mean it doesn't meet a certain group of people's definition of what a museum should be? It's sort of like debating whether a 44 tonner and an EL commuter car in a corn field in Iowa is or isn't a railway museum. Who gets to make that call?

Ah, the M-WORD.

I have been nudging an outfit in the general direction of museum best practices, and of course I get a lot of blowback, but this one was MOST interesting. They said, and this was just a shoot-from-the-hip observation, but ... "museum" is a bad word. It makes people think of cobweb covered static displays, stillness and boredom akin to a tomb, where bored retirees shush you for talking or texting. They pointed out that the Henry Ford Museum didn't drop the latter word arbitrarily, it was poison for their business and it is poison for ours.

I think they really have a point there.

Try replacing the word with "adventure and learning center" and you'd see my point.


As for nonprofits. I have just been called down for my affinity for nonprofits, and it made me rethink my reasoning. I don't believe in sole ideologies, I don't believe Rand, Keynes, Smith or Hayek should be followed to the exclusion of all others, I believe each in their place and their time. Simply put, it comes down to four positives and a negative, which IMO outweigh the positives.


That is #1. Suddenly BLAM, everything is going to scrap and there's no board of directors to moderate such decisions. Private owners are far more likely to be bound by obligations which contradict with preservation, or simply at the whim of their emotions -- paradoxically, private owners are much more difficult to do business with in my experience. Last week, two snubbed my cash inquiries for no apparent reason, and two months prior, two nonprofits were all too happy to take my hard-earned. This makes no sense!

Granted, nonprofits are just as destructive, but their method is slow neglect. This is easier to save things from, and in any case, I expect things to improve as museums get religion about carbarns.

#2: Tax advantages. There is no high moral ground here. It is about ahairy monster in Washington throwing briefcases full of cash. Some might underplay those advantages, but when you take an honest and thorough look at the accounting, the advantages are staggering. To put it another way, next time you need a $60 gadget, take $100 out of your wallet, drive to the nearest defense contractor and just hand their secretary $40 for no reason, and then buy your $60 thing with the change. "Why on God's green earth would I do that", you ask. Indeed.

Another tax advantage is how business failure is handled. A nonprofit, private debts are far more likely to be forgiven, and courts are far more likely to respect the organization's mission, and favor reorganization over liquidation, or more careful liquidation to other nonprofits equipped to care for the assets. Make a list of the shortline failures in your state in the last 30 years, now list the railroad museum failures. It's a real eye opener.

#3: fundraising. It's much easier to get donors to give up money for a nonprofit than for a for-profit. Of course, Kickstarter and similar web sites are changing all that, so we'll see how that breaks.

NEGATIVE: Control. In a nonprofit, you lose technical control of the assets. Decision power is in the hands of a board of directors, in which you can occupy at most one seat. However, there are several ways to keep practical control of the assets. One is to bind up the assets in donation agreements. This is commonplace especially for large gifts. Those bindings are absolute, unless they can go to court and show they are patently unreasonable due to changes in their situation. Second, you can retain strong influence as a donor simply by continuing to be a donor. The Board can defy you, but you can cut them off, which means they won't defy you.

In a private for-profit, you have 100% control, except for one teensy weensy little problem. As an aside, those who believe in reincarnation always seem to believe they were a princess or high merchant in their past lives, never a rice farmer or a conscripted foot soldier. The same applies to private ownership. Only good for owners. And so, people overextend to become owners, which is how we have so many owners in trouble and equipment lost for that reason. Also,

#4: help. Maintaining railroad equipment is not a one man job. Yes, I know private owners have no trouble getting volunteer help in the short term, but ultimately that "0% ownership" thing wears on nerves. Nonprofits are in a better position to attract and retain volunteer help.

Case in point - the Modoc County Museum in Alturas, CA:

I saw the collection in the Belli's "attic" (actually the second story of their house) several years before the county purchased it. It certainly looked like a museum, although it was only accessible by invitation.

Was it the transfer to public ownership which made it a museum, or making it available for public viewing? They were not a 501(c)3, obviously.

More discussion fodder...

I seem to recall that the Strasburg Rail Road is a private company and not a non profit? Obviously we've got several folks here that can speak authoritatively on whether or not that is correct, and if so, why the choice was made.

Note that Strasburg does not claim to be a museum, and is not the same as the PA RR Museum even though many tourists don't make the distinction. However, many would consider it to be one of the finest railroad museums around, (even though they don't use that term). I think the proper term would be "tourist railway" but I don't know what they use.

This stuff isn't as easy as it looks, is it?

My comment about insanity was mostly tongue in cheek, although I sometimes wonder about the rationale of spending your volunteer time busting your knuckles and getting filthy dirty. Beyond that, however, I have seen enough of railfandom over the past 35 years to make me seriously question the sanity of some of the people involved, especially among the foamers and the chasers.

Mike

Regarding public and private "museums", here in washington, DC we have the Spy Museum which is a for-profit enterprise that does a good job of education about the history of espionage. And of course we also have a Tussaud's Wax Museum.

Wesley

While there are obvious excpections, the most notable individual figures in the industry do tend to be a bit, uh, "creative". Often they're un-married and have no family. Why is that? Well, if you're one of the 99 percent, you only have so much time and money. You have to set priorities. Do you send the kids to college, or do you save old #58?

Museums and organizations can help spread the load, making it easier for folks to participate while also maintaining a normal life.

What I see most, Bob, are severe manifestations of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I don't know if it is endemic in other hobbies and avocations like it is in railfanning, but some of that obsessive-compulsive stuff borders on downright dangerous. Like the crazy frenzy on the highway when a steam locomotive is being paced. Or the photographer who stands in the middle of the track in front of an oncoming train in order to get that "perfect shot."

Mike

We can look at several things. Most specifically, what do you call yourself, versus how are you regarded by others.

The generally accepted meaning of "museum" by just about any English-language speaker is of a building, facility, or institution that presents and/or preserves objects (not books or data) of historical, scientific, and/or cultural interest and at least takes some effort to make them publicly accessible. This covers everything from the Baseball/Rock-&-Roll Hall of Fame to the National Gallery of Art to the various Museums of Natural History to the Burlingame Pez Museum and National Mustard Museum.

If it's a ride, it's an excursion. (See Delta Queen, Cumbres & Toltec, etc.)
If it has price tags on everything, it's a store engaging in false advertising. (Depending on who you listen to, we have one of those in Baltimore, the "Baltimore Tattoo Museum," a tattoo parlor masquerading as a "museum".)
If the public can't get in to see any of the stuff, it's a collection or hoard. (See The Barnes Foundation near Philadelphia for a decades-long controversy and battle over the precise meaning and administration of that "museum." See also the former Trolleyville USA, a couple private collections of rolling stock, etc.)
If you're a "living history environment," you may or may not be a museum in the proper sense. (See Colonial Williamsburg, Greenfield Village, "Olde Towne [Fill-In-The-Blank]", etc.)

Now, never mind what you call yourself, how you are incorporated, or how you operate. How do your customers see you?

The Strasburg RR, cited earlier, is an intriguing example. For years they've blurred the line between museum and commercial outfit. No one doubts that they are, in a sense, "preserving" Great Western 90, Ma & Pa, 20, LO&S 10, etc. On the other hand, they'll cut back 90's extended smokebox, repaint the B&M cars as needed, haul 150-ton freight cars, and lay new rail.

There are excursion lines in the UK where, once you walk past a certain invisible barrier or gate, you're walking back into time. You can, if you play it right, feel just like you and your fellow passengers just stepped off some time travel pod into Victorian or Elizabethan England/Scotland/Wales. Is that a museum, if they're still wearing out the choo-choos and carriages?

And wine aficionados all build a wine cellar in the basement and buy wine for $20,000+ a case as an "investment."

And everyone who knits ends up with a room stuffed to the rafters with specific kinds of yarns, fabrics, needles, and the like.

And comic book or anime enthusiasts are overweight guys with greasy, unwashed hair and horrible social skills who live in their mothers' basements.

And cat enthusiasts turn into the "crazy cat ladies" hoarding dozens of cats in urine-stenched houses.

And auto-racing enthusiasts all paint numbers on their cars, wear the t-shirt or tattoo of their favorite drivers, soup up their cars, drive recklessly, and plan vacations around the NASCAR schedules.

Because the ones you notice, or that get on your nerves, are of course the epitomes of their classes.

Ri-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght. Gotcha.

As ADM IV points out, you're viewing a few individuals as representing an entire field of preservation. Yes, that's the folks you remember. Just like the person I recall from a recent convention was the lady who, twice, stood in the middle of the tracks taking photos. Yes, I remember her, since she was a royal pain in the tender. But there were about 199 other well behaved people there who all pretty much blended together. She doesn't represent the group as a whole, they do!

OK, without playing armchair shrink, ask yourself this:

Presumably you're using the "pop culture definition" of OCD, which people use to refer to something like a co-worker who is extremely fastidious about how they keep their desk, rather than the clinical version which is actually about a potentially disabling mental condition?

Given that, you would be referring to things like "obsessed with details" "prone to hoard" "focused on minutia" "compelled to complete a project"...

Now, consider a museum director's job description? Note any parallels? Is it really that surprising that folks who would be described as "OCD" by a non professional would also be the folks who spend their spare time documenting every B&O Reefer car ever built, lovingly cataloged, documented and cross referenced?

Consider the reaction a "normal" person would have. "What? They had hundreds, or thousands, right? Are you nuts? That would take years, if it's even possible at all! You must be joking... Hey, the ball game is on soon, let's go grab some beer and chips before kickoff!"

A recent article in Wired comes to mind. They wrote what appeared to be a very fair and even handed article on Asperger's syndrome (Which is a far more likely diagnosis for the folks you reference that are commonly called 'OCD').

They talk about the symptoms and how it affects people. Not great socially, obsessed with details, fascinated by technology, love for arcane details and trivia, and many of them are interested in trains. (Sound familiar? Yep, does to me...)

What I liked about the article was that it didn't simply write "those folks" off. They said something to the effect that they may actually be a better than normal candidate for some positions. The obvious example is computers where obsession with technology and incredible attention to detail come in quite handy for programmers. (Oh, and, in my case, that would actually be "us folks", if I had to guess, though it's never been formally diagnosed.)

Strasburg is the picture postcard example that tax designation is unimportant compared to WHAT YOU DO. Those guys are superheroes of preservation. They are a better museum than most museums, and they certainly understand the "living" part of living history. Doubt me, walk across the street. And what they do for other museums is beyond words - it would be difficult to imagine trying to maintain a steam locomotive without them, and their effects on preservation are felt wider than that. A fellow would not be wrong to volunteer there, if they do that.

It just goes to show things are not as simple as the ideologues would make them out to be.


i'm not going to get into businesses in other countries, because US tax law is not comparable.

That's one of the things that gets me out of my chair about all this factionalism and blind ideology. Jesus does not have a sister named Ayn Rand. Nor a brother named John Maynard Keynes. He does, however, have a father who was pretty clear on the point of "place no gods before me", meaning, you should not allow any profane (non-sacred) ideology to guide you as strongly as the word of God. That's why you have a brain, to sort out and improve the ideology of fallible humans. He also had a word or two to say about judging, if I recall.

The laws are damned complicated, and most people aren't even well informed about them, so their opinion is uninformed.

Whatever your view on economics is, it's definitely not the last word on the subject. So stop holding airs as if it is. Nobody knows if for-profit, non-profit or whatever is the best way to do things. But we are all in this social experiment called the U S of A, and the regs are the regs, and we all do as best we can under them.

As illustrated in the Strasburg example... Bottom line. Either you do good work, or you don't.

It doesn't matter if an organization is for-profit or non-profit. What matters is whether the organization has a plan for continuation of its existence beyond the current generation of principals. Most private owners do not. Well documented recent examples being the Brookins collection and the Ed Mitchell collection. The Strasburg Railroad does seem to have such a plan; which indicates that it is not necessary to be a non-profit to do so.

That's only important if one cares about its continued existance once one has died.

How many organizations have actively planned for the contingency of their potential demise? it would be very unusual if all the members or principals of any group died at the same time, so somebody should be around to carry out whatever plans were made.

I'd go so far as to say it is irresponsible to NOT have a shut down and go away plan in place.

dave