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While I appreciate Alan's encouraging words regarding funding and the influence of smaller museums, I'm afraid the data differs somewhat.
Since actual facts and figures are so important to this conversation, a search a few minutes ago of active NSF awards for museums shows less than 4% going to small museums (or affiliated organizations.)
Similarly, although both ASTC and AAM state that the "majority" of US museums are small museums, both of their boards each only contain approximately 10% representation from small museums.
I really wish it was a case of "too small to fail" but the only museum statistic where small museums are leading the way since 2008 is in closures.
Far be it for me to question a museum because their primary concern is to keep the doors open, rather than debating the finer points of evaluation methods.
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Paul Orselli Workshop (POW!)
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On Nov 1, 2011, at 1:11 PM, Alan Friedman wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
>
> Hey, my responses are getting shorter!
>
> 1. Joe, front-end evaluation is all about finding out what the visitor
> wants, as well as what the visitor believes and knows. Formative
> evaluation can also find out what the visitor wants and needs, even if the
> visitor doesn't know until he/she sees what we are proposing (e.g., people
> didn't know they wanted a planetarium until they saw one for the first
> time). So yes, the visitor counts at least as much if not far more than
> the exhibit developer or curator does, when we find out using evaluation.
>
> 2. Adela, Beryl, Erich, Jeff, Paul, and everyone who is concerned that
> some funders' preferences for proposals with evaluation put small
> institutions at a great disadvantage, I note that some smaller
> institutions win a large number of highly competitive grants and awards,
> from NSF, IMLS, private foundations, and others who require evaluation.
> I'm thinking Sciencenter in Ithaca NY, Montshire Museum of Science in
> Norwich Vermont, Explora in Albuquerque NM, Chabot Science Center in
> Oakland CA, Manhattan Children's Museum in New York City. I serve on a
> foundation board that regularly makes grants to organizations with just
> two or three paid staff, and we require (and pay for) evaluation every
> time. I'm sure this listserv could come up with many more examples here
> and abroad.
>
> Perhaps a good ASTC session could be on how at least some smaller
> institutions manage to do evaluation and compete successfully with much
> larger places.
>
> Beryl, I've sat on NSF panels where people said "this proposal is such a
> small part of that giant institution's work that they will not give it any
> attention," and penalized the giant proposal because of that. So both
> small and big institutions can experience bias. I've also seen positive
> votes on small institution proposals just because they were small
> institutions, and the project would be so important to them that they
> couldn't let it fail. Hmmm, too small to fail. I like that better than
> the banks' claim that they are too big to fail.
>
> Alan
> ________________________________________
> Alan J. Friedman, Ph.D.
> Consultant for Museum Development and Science Communication
> 29 West 10th Street
> New York, New York 10011 USA
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>
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> www.museumgroup.com <http://www.museumgroup.com/>
>
>
>>
>
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