Cautionary tale

Warning: the museum refered to in this post is not maritime - but the lessons apply.

The New York Times ran an article this Sunday on the Milwaukee Public Museum's Struggle for Solvency. The article points out the hard times museums are having attracting visitors and the fiscally expensive attempts made by the Milwaukee Museum to turn the tide. These attempts included many of what I call, non-mission initiatives, and ended up costing the now backrupt museum its solvency, or as the Times puts it:

like many museums in midsize cities around the country, eager to break out of a rut of stagnant attendance and attract tourists to stoke civic pride and the local economy, the Milwaukee Public Museum spent heavily on an aggressive expansion that never paid off. Besides its operating costs, it is saddled with $28 million in debt and other liabilities — a stark warning to other institutions that build in hopes that "they will come."