[meteorite-list] No Meteorites on display!!!!

Wed May 25 15:30:44 EDT 2011

Andrew Warhola, Jr. was a Pittsburgh native, a
native son. He was a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon
in Fine Arts. The Andy Warhol Museum, one of
the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, is located
at 117 Sandusky Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
(about 4 miles from the Natural History Museum).
It is the largest American art museum dedicated
to a single artist, holding more than 12,000 works
by the artist. My guess is that the Warholia in the
Nat. Hist Mus. was to promote the Warhol Museum.
Andy's work is also exhibited on The Moon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Museum

The Carnegie Natural History Museum is dinosaur-
oriented; it has the world's largest collection of
Jurassic dinosaur fossils. The display issue is acute;
the Museum has 21,000,000 specimens of which only
10,000 can be exhibited at one time.

Meteorites are displayed in the Buhl Planetarium
with its Hall of the Universe. The fifth largest meteorite
fragment [746 pounds/340 kilograms] from Barringer
Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona. (Meteorite now
displayed outside of the Henry Buhl, Jr. Planetarium
at the Science Center.

The Hillman Hall of Minerals and Gems in the Natural
History includes a few meteorites from the hundreds of
specimens included in this Hall's permanent collection,
they say. What photos I can find seem old, dark and
dirty.

Best shot at a meteorite display? Get a Death of The
Dinosaurs exhibit on Chicxulub with a lot meteorites
in it --- tall and narrow; slip it in right next to the
famous Diplodocus carnegii... He's fiberglass; he
won't mind.

The lack of local reference, due to the fact that only
eight meteorites have been found in Pennsylvania,
may be largely responsible for the lack of emphasis
on them.

Sterling K. Webb
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Dunklee" <steve.dunklee at yahoo.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>; "Peter Davidson" 
<P.Davidson at nms.ac.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] No Meteorites on display!!!!

Very good and well written response! I love art and am an artist myself. 
I love Monet manet Salvador Dali. Frederic Remington. ect. And I 
actually like some Andy Warhol. and not to mention Picasso and Rembrant. 
i have some Monet prints and an original on loan to a museum. as well as 
some other original paintings sculptures and pottery. The presentation 
of meteorites or mineral samples compared to a major exhibit would 
actually be low cost antdonly take up a small corner of space.  One of 
the museums here in arkansas did an Egyptian exhibit in 2008. they spent 
millions of dollars setting it up then the market crashed. tickets for 
an adult were around $40 and for students $22. they lost money big time! 
had the price been lower like $12 fror adults and $8 for students they 
would have had many more people viewing the exhibit and buying 
merchandise at the show. every ticket sale at any event nationwide has 
an average of $30 in ancillary sales. parking, food,
 prints, programs,tshirts, maps ect. so for a $12 ticket you would have 
at least 10 more people who would view and spend money as opposed to a 
$44 ticket. 10 people spending $44 is $440. one person spending $44 for 
a ticket then spending an additional $30 is only $74. A small corner in 
a museum lets say 16 feet long with meteorite men advertisement and 
Rocks from Space ads with unclassified real but weathered meteorites for 
sale next to the shark teeth would be a low cost and maintainance money 
maker for any museum.
Cheers
Steve

--- On Wed, 5/25/11, Peter Davidson <P.Davidson at nms.ac.uk> wrote:

> From: Peter Davidson <P.Davidson at nms.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] No Meteorites on display!!!!
> To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Date: Wednesday, May 25, 2011, 8:49 AM
> Good Morning everyone on the List
>
> I would like to thank Mike Antonelli for his e-mail drawing
> attention to the situation at The Carnegie Museum of Natural
> History in Pittsburgh. The lack of a meteorite display there
> highlights one of the problems many museums have around the
> World in deciding what to exhibit and what not.
>
> Can I first say that I have no particular insight into the
> museum's policies for exhibition, nor do I personally know
> any of the curators. However I know many, many curators from
> other museums around the World and I can draw on this
> knowledge to get a feel for the problems the Carnegie has.
>
> The notion that museums are somehow divorced from the
> everyday World and that curators exist in tax-payer funded
> ivory towers trying to devise as many ways as we can
> possibly think of to avoid putting our collection on display
> to the public is one that bears no resemblance to reality.
> Museums around the World are under increasing pressure from
> their funding bodies, whether that be National Governments,
> local governments or town councils, to cut costs and to
> justify their dwindling expenditure by housing exhibitions
> that have some kind of "WOW" factor. These blockbuster
> exhibitions may indeed, as Steve Dunklee rightly points out,
> have little to do with Natural History. But it is likely to
> attract big sponsorship and media attention and this may
> have a trickle down benefit to the museum through increased
> visitor numbers and heightened awareness. This inevitably
> leads to hard decisions about the best (or most profitable)
> use of the limited space museums have. If a museum director
> has to choose between a high profile Andy Warhol exhibition
> that will attract major corporate sponsorship and generate a
> good deal of media interest or a much more worthy display of
> objects from the museum's own collections that will bring in
> no income and little media attention, then I am afraid that
> in today's world Warhol wins!
>
> Other factors to consider here are that a museum's policies
> are largely decided by the Director (or equivalent - the
> Head Honcho in any case) who may not have any interest in
> meteorites, whether they have a good collection or not.
> Perhaps there is no dedicated meteorite curator to look
> after and promote the collection. This can be a serious
> problem for any collection. After all, I myself am a
> mineralogist who happens to have an interest in meteorites
> and have been active in promoting the collection whenever I
> can. Had I not had this interest, the collection would
> indeed be stored away and might never see the light of day.
> As it is we will have meteorites in our new galleries (not
> enough in my view) but this is something!
>
> There are other ways to promote the collection other than
> by display. Taking the collection into the community is a
> vital role museums can and do play. This can be done by
> organising temporary or touring exhibitions, by school
> visits or talks and lectures to people of all ages and
> experiences.
>
> I agree with MikeG to some extent in that private
> collectors have a very important role in complementing the
> work that museums do. Most collectors I know have an
> enthusiasm, dedication and depth of knowledge in their
> particular field that museums often lack. Clearly
> co-operation and mutual appreciation is better than conflict
> and constant criticism.
>
> Please believe me when I tell you that as curators, we are
> trying to do our very best under difficult circumstances.
> Museums are often viewed by governments as an easy target
> for funding cuts - expensive white elephants is a phrase
> that often crops up - so the axe is often wielded here
> quickest and deepest than in other areas. Collectors and
> others should use every method available to highlight this
> problem and contributing to online blogs, forums, Twitter
> and Facebook are very useful weapons - use them.
>
> Thanks for listening
>
> Peter Davidson
> Curator of Minerals
>
> Department of Natural Sciences
> National Museums Collection Centre
> 242 West Granton Road
> Edinburgh EH5 1JA
> Scotland
> Tel: 00 44 131 247 4283
> E-mail: p.davidson at nms.ac.uk
>
> New exhibition A Passion for Glass, National Museum of
> Scotland, Fri 20 May - Sun 11 September. Free entry.
> www.nms.ac.uk/glass
>
> National Museums Scotland, Scottish Charity, No. SC 011130
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