As the result of a buyout/early retirement offer made by Museum officials, the following 21 employees of Mystic Seaport have moved on.
Collections: Phil Budlong, Claire White Peterson, Katrina Sniper, Leah Prescott, Andy German, and Dave Mathieson
Finance: Suzy Greenhalgh
Stores: Sandy Brown, Wanda Panciera, Dede Wirth, Bernadette White, Barbara Stefanski, Marlene Ross, Jane Wilkins, Dawn Hartman
Museum Education: Karen Havrilla, Rick Spenser, Karen Bigger
Exhibits: Deb House
Security: Roger DesRoberts
This has personally been a hard post to write, and it's been through several iterations. I even considered not posting it. But as part of the mission of this blog is to post the maritime museum news, I could not objectively leave this out. In the end, I ended with this short, brief post. If you know the people, you know the depth of our loss. Mystic Seaport is both the place and the people, and today is not what is was when these great folks were with us.
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7 comments:
Kelly,
I'm sorry to hear what happened. Can you tell us why this occurred? Budget issues, I imagine?
Seems this is the way of the world. We hope they all do well in their respective futures.
Dwayne
Thank you both for your concern. Yes, the cuts were driven by budget issues. On site visitation has been steadily dropping. What has been interesting to me, and probably no surprise to you, the Museum's (especially the library's) visitation, both on site and online is increasing. Think there is a shift coming in the way people "experience" their history.
I was looking at some of your library online last evening. It is rather impressive.
Dwayne
Actually, I am surprised that attendance is dropping. MS is such a fabulous experience, and all the tourism research says that's what people want. It's relevant here in Seattle, because local heritage folks are debating the need for a new centralized maritime heritage facility. We're also debating how best to attract heritage tourists. Thoughts?
Joe
It is an interesting question. Here we have a consumer society and yet they're not 'buying' in to history. At the same time the number of geneologists is growing expodentially. (And they do spend money to pad out their personal histories). So somehow, and i think this has got to be looked at from a whole new perspective - Museums and heritiage facilities have to be flexible enough to present visitors with Their History.
As I mentioned previously, on site and website library visits are up. Studying the visitation logs you can see that people are coming in through searches on personally significant subjects. The more the heritage facility can offer that speaks directly to an individual the more people will come. Of course, I've no idea how this can be accomplished practically.
What ideas are you debating?
Great comments. I like the notion of a drop-in facility to learn about personal or family history. It would be a great draw for a facility that's about broader history. It seems to me that the LDS church (Mormons), with their expertise on geneaology, could provide some lessons.
On the maritime museum question, we're debating everything from a full-scale maritime history museum, a la Mystic Seaport West, to enhanced joint marketing efforts to a conventional museum with satellite living history campuses. No consensus yet and no telling if there will ever be a consensus.
Joe
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