Americans do not like museums Not TRUE

Americans do not like museums Not TRUE

By Craig Gilborn

DORSET, VT--‘Americans don’t like museums’ puts blame where it doesn’t belong. Made on behalf of trustees of the Adirondack Museum, in April, 2017, it explained changes necessitated by poor attendance. The museum’s former director says the canard is a false rumor: 850 million Americans went to museums compared to 483 million fans that attended professional sporting events. Craig Gilborn, at the museum for 20 years, cites the web page of the American Alliance of Museums. He says visits in 1985-1992 averaged 97,000 each year for eight years. 1992, his last year at the museum, saw 100,968 counted, or about 800 a day, in Hamilton County, America’ most rural county east of the Mississippi. Decline came when trustees were in charge and counts were no longer released to the press.

The disclosures above are among others in “Disclosures and Allegations,” Gilborn’s animadversion of 2020, which was preceded by “Afterword” and Whose History: A Museum Memoir, in 2019 and 2007, respectively.

No trustee had a demonstrated interest in Adirondack history, as did the museum’s founder Harold K. Hochschild. Trustees are city folks, and other peoples’ stories are not theirs. However, a “forever wild” Adirondack Park is where trustees have a personal stake. History takes time and has rules. Practitioners find no pro quid quo in it. No independent voices have made policy on the board since 1993.  The Shelburne Museum’s board had four active museum professionals on it in 1985-1993, when Gilborn was a member. A whistleblower, he requests a retraction about Americans not liking museums and the return of an exhibit on mines and mining communities to the building that was erected in 1982 in memory of the founder of the Adirondack Museum, Harold K. Hochschild.

This release may be circulated.  “Disclosures and Allegations” sources the quotation in the first line and is available as an attachment from the provider address shown above.  Craig Gilborn lives at 93 Pleasant St., East Dorset, Vt. 05253.  His credits will be sent if requested. He carries a cell phone by day but seldom answers it or checks for message: 1- 802-779-4994