[meteorite-list] Omani meteorite museum

[MeteorHntr at aol.com]

Hello AL,

I think you add to my point, in that: even the Field Museum doesn't spend any money for their meteorite display because they don't feel it is worth it. Why spend the money if it won't increase the sales of tickets at the door.  Rest asured that if enough people did care, they would invest to improve it.  Bottom line: Meteorites are not a ticket seller.

You bring up another point, there are those of you in your area that visit the collection, because you care.  People in Oman don't even care enough to go pick up meteorites laying openly on the ground.  Are they going to go to a meteorite museum? How many "tourists" are going to care enough to go to such a museum?  Harvey had a struggle with his museum and he had the big crater there to arrest people's attention.

Ironically, if the Omanis would make a museum, it would educate their general public of the financial value of all the meteorites just waiting to be recovered.  This would only ADD to the "smuggling" of meteorites out of the country.

Hey, maybe the key to getting 10 times or 100 times more meteorites out of Oman would be if they did in fact build a museum...

Scratch everything I said before.  Building a real big meteorite museum is a GREAT idea.  They should invest lots and lots of money building the museum, and then they should spend 10 times more money advertising the museum so everyone will go.

Yea, yea, that's the ticket.

Steve Arnold
#1

Hi Steve and list,
This isn't exactly true. There is a pretty good group of us (from this
area) that get to the museum and wear out the carpets, smear the cases
with our paw prints and create a oxidizing rich environment from not
wiping our mouths after a long view of precious meteorite specimens. I
think they have special detail that cleans up after us after the visits.
Probably meteorite craze recognition software in the Field's cameras so
they are on guard :-)
Very true that the display hasn't changed for a very long time. Dr.
Wadawa (sp, sorry Mini) said it was her aim a few years back to work on
the display but of course you need support from the museum to do such a
undertaking and they weigh the cost verses the draw of crowds. Sometimes
the money just gets funneled into other areas deemed more important,
better draw or so I have been told by other curators of collections.
--AL Mitterling (who prefers to talk to the real Steve Arnold)
MeteorHntr at aol.com wrote:
 I am not sure if they even vacuum the carpet in the meteorite section
 at the Chicago Field Museum but once a year due to the lack of foot
 traffic (I know they haven't spent any money to update the displays in
 about 90 years!).