Keeping the Faith
Keeping Secrets and Keeping the Faith
March 10, 2008
The secret is finally out.
The Virginia Museum of Transportation is in trouble. Deep trouble. Museum Management Consultants says so. The newspaper says they say so. The newspaper’s editorial writers say that is so, so troubling.
So?
The press and public comments last week were unfairly harsh. Yes, mistakes have been made and accountability is critical whenever you ask to spend other people’s dough. Given the extenuating circumstances and the dedicated efforts of current staff, however, a little less invective and a little more perspective would have been nice.
Ultimately the press coverage may serve as a blessing by raising public awareness, but it also highlighted a number of myths floating around.
Myth #1: There was a secret. Nobody has tried to keep this information hush-hush. The city commissioned the study. Norfolk Southern Foundation paid for it. VMT welcomed it. Visitors who know the place could see and sense it. It was a secret only to those who have remained out of touch with the place.
Myth #2: VMT’s problems are primarily due to bad management. What happens to any organization when it loses 48% of its budget support? Has to reduce staff to the bone (and remove a few ribs as well)? Changes leadership repeatedly? Has its ability to do marketing and outreach crippled?
Myth #3: The Museum appeals to a very limited audience. Is it just for tiny tots and old railroaders? Is it only a blue-collar museum (as though blue-collar folks aren’t important or can’t appreciate aesthetics)?
Actually, attractions like VMT appeal to a broad cross-section of the population. We Americans like “earthy” history exhibits. We especially like seeing and feeling and smelling the metal, wood and leather of things on wheels. And we love trains, even decades after American railroads passed their zenith.
Myth #4: The Museum decided to sell the Nickel Plate steam locomotive to pay bills. They reluctantly agreed to sell only after they were approached by another tourist organization and after they concluded that this loco, which never ran in Virginia, had little relevance to the mission of VMT.
And due to extraordinary circumstances, on this rare occasion the funds from such a sale were used for operations rather than acquisitions. Frankly, I would rather have an open facility with one less exhibit than a bankrupt and closed attraction with its exhibits intact.
Myth #5: VMT is just another museum—nice but not critical to Roanoke. I wish the reactions of media and public officials had been a little more “we” and less “they.” After all, there is no cultural attraction in Roanoke with the same intrinsic connections to the city as VMT. I appreciate Mill Mountain Theatre, the Roanoke Symphony, the Art and Science Museums. However, none of them relates to Roanoke and southwest Virginia the way those historic exhibits in that historic freight station do.
VMT carries the soul of Roanoke. The railroad transformed a bucolic village into a regional urban center. It put Roanoke on the map. Even now the rush and roar of trains bisect the heart of downtown. I have a stack of books on American railroading piled on my den table right now. In every one of them Roanoke’s growth and accomplishments via the railroad get significant attention.
No one did steam railroading as impressively for as long as the Norfolk and Western. No other railroad built its own locomotives and built them so well that they are still considered among the best ever manufactured more than a half-century later.
Vintage cars and buggies aside, that’s why VMT exists. That’s why the Winston Link Museum came here. Those two, the multi-million dollar Railwalk that connects them, and the continued imposing presence of N&W’s successor are integrated threads of a rich and unique tapestry.
Myth #6: VMT shouldn’t look to donors to rescue it from distress. Why not? It is a wonderful treasure worth saving. However financially successful it may become in the future, current circumstances require big hearts from both government and private parties.
The Museum of Transportation isn’t asking for a marvelous new building, just an adequately-maintained vintage facility. It doesn’t need a $3 million-plus operating budget, just sufficient funding to once again employ an adequate number of professional staff and effectively manage and market its product. It isn’t asking for millions to purchase new exhibits, just enough to restore and protect the irreplaceable pearls of transportation history it already has at its fingertips.
All that VMT’s leadership wants is the means to run a “mainline” operation once again rather than maneuver along a wobbly, rusty and overgrown side track.
That would be so, so …right.
Labels: finances, Museum Management Consultants, Nickel Plate, Norfolk and Western, O. Winston Link, Railwalk, Roanoke
posted by VMT-blogger @ 11:12 AM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
I think a lot of the problem goes back to when the museum became a "transportation" museum. The only form of transportation that had any significant historical presence in Roanoke was trains, specifically N&W trains. Forget the cars, buggies and anything else not related to parallel steel rails. Do one thing and do it very well, not several things poorly.
The museum's mission and its collections don't quite mesh yet. The anonymous poster is more right than wrong about Roanoke's transportation heritage. However, the poster is probably unaware that the museum has a larger obligation to preserve and interpret the transportation history of Virginia, which includes cars, buggies, and all sorts of things that didn't run on parallel steel rails.
The museum was named the Official Transportation Museum of the Commonwealth of Virginia by the General Assembly some years ago (but still doesn't receive state funding), so its greater mission is more than just lip service.
As for doing one thing well, the one thing the museum has chosen is transportation. It's not trying to incorporate art, science, zoology, or social history. Its one thing is how people and goods got from here to there within the borders of Virginia. I say keep on Keeping the Faith.
With all due respect Phillip, the museum does not have a larger obligation to preserve and interepret.... It chose to do those things rather than be a railroad museum focusing on the N&W. That didn't work out so well and to now keep repeating an error hoping for a different result is the height of foolishness. Just as the museum board chose to be a transportation museum, let it now choose to focus on what is really the history of transportation in Roanoke - railroading. The museum might lose its designation as the Official Transportation Museum of the Commonwealth of Virginia? So what? The General Assembly gives the museum nothing more than lip service.
The larger obligation of which I speak is not one chosen by the museum's board, but by the absence of another entity to carry that particular banner. Virginia has no other institution dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of its transportation heritage.
There's a wonderful African proverb that fits nicely here. It tells of a chief who decided to host a great feast. He sent messengers to each village, asking them to send a representative to the feast, and to bring with them a container of the village's finest wine to contribute to the feast.
One village had no wine. Instead, they filled their gourd with water and sent their representative to the feast. During a very solemn and symbolic moment, each representative emptied his gourd into a large vessel. The chief then stirred all of the liquid around to symbolize the intermixing of the village's fine offerings, and the unity of his kingdom. He took a decorated gourd and dipped it into the large vessel and took a sip.
His face turned from surprise to anger to sadness as he found that the entire vessel was full of water.
The saying goes, "If not you, who?"
Immanuel Kant spoke of a categorical imperative, of the recognition of a need that supersedes reason. If you were to see a man drowning and no one else was around, would you attempt to save him even if you could not swim yourself?
If the Virginia Museum of Transportation would not try to save Virginia's transportation story, who would? Its board recognized that need, and that is to their credit. The museum suffers from an identity crisis, but not because of a lack of focus in its mission, but rather because its collections have not caught up from when it was simply a local railroad museum. This doesn't mean that ambition to do more should be denied, nor that failure to accomplish this in the present dictates an abandonment of the goal for the future.
You are correct, Craig, that the board chose to become one thing when it had already been another thing. You're also correct to recognize the dichotomy of what the General Assembly says and what it does. I respect your opinion on the matter as it is valid, but I humbly disagree. I believe there is a greater purpose than that voted on by a group of businessmen and women, and I support the museum in its struggle to realize its vision.
The presence or absence of someone else to be the "transportation museum" for Virginia should not be a big consideration when one's own train has derailed. It was a noble idea but it didn't work. So what's next?
In simple business terms, the cost of builiding a collection of antique and/or "collector" automobiles is beyond the capacity of the museum. Single cars sell for more at auction in Arizona than the museum's yearly operating budget. I doubt there is much of an audience out there for horse and buggy displays. Aerospace items are, for the most part, too large and the Smithsonian is only a few hours away. I supposed trucks could be collected but is there an audience large enough to pay the bills?
The museum has a very strong railroad collection, anchored by the 611 and 1218. It should get back to basics and build the East coast version of the museum in California.
It's been said that "non-profit" is a tax status and not a business model. Craig is certainly right that the VMT has to make money and focus on what does bring in money. In "business terms," he's dead on.
The notion of a noble idea that didn't work doesn't mean that it can't or won't. There's a commercial on television right now featuring Sir James Dyson. He talks about inventing a certain kind of device in his Dyson vacuum cleaners. He said that he went through 5,000 prototypes before he got one that worked. If he'd followed the same business model Craig mentions, he'd never have invented what put his company on the map. And he's in the for-profit world. There's more to this kind of business than business.
Failure is not a reason to abandon a cause, especially one so good as this. It's just a reason to re-evaluate what went wrong, and change tactics accordingly -- it's a learning tool. But it means nothing if we don't actually learn from it.
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