How a $34M dinosaur museum in northern Alberta went from big awards to bailouts

[britishcanuk]

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/national/2434m+dinosaur+museum+northern+alberta+went+from+awards/12476233/story.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&utm_term=Autofeed#link_time=1480874211

[tmaier]

From the article...
"While research is ongoing at the museum’s on-site lab, managers also have no clear sources of funding for the digging and research that will be needed to stock the exhibits with new finds."

"Nevertheless, nobody appears to have seen this coming. With the museum conceived at the height of Alberta’s oil boom, little consideration was given to funding it beyond opening day. Economic impact studies were prepared for local governments, but no detailed business plans or feasibility studies."

I've seen this many times. A piece of science needs funding, and these people appear who are managers and similar type people. They scrape up money and create a fancy building and management offices, and then if there is any spare change, they use that for the science.

The baby is often thrown out with the bathwater, but a beautiful, awarding winning building remains, lavishly furnished. The next time you wander through one of these very beautiful museums, wonder how much money actually goes back to the science itself. I've raised this question with museum curators, and their attitude has always been that the museum business is a money market game, and you need fancy buildings to draw in the crowd.

It seems science gets rather debased in this money game, and pushed aside.

[Oxytropidoceras]

Another part of the money game, for both museums and universities, is that people, who are capable of donating multi-millions of dollar to museums and university typically want their money going to a new building, which will have their name either on the building or a plaque of some sort inside it. Once the building is built, almost nobody within the same group of people are interested in donating an equvalent amount of money for an endowment or other money to maintain such buildings. As a result, museums and universities end up with building new buildings that at the same time, the other buildings they have are falling to pieces due to lack of maintenance. Some universities have very beautiful research centers that have empty floors because the university lacks the money to pay research staff or even for matching funds for government research grants that would pay for the staff and science. So it goes.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Oxytropidoceras
added missing words

[Ridgehiker]

It was too many oil billions in the cookie jar.

 

I like the Grande Prairie region but to be honest, it's a remote locale and building this museum is akin to putting an NFL team in Missoula, Montana.   (or Green Bay, just kidding).  There just isnt the market.  The few times I've driven up that way it was to look out for Moose and Wolves along the highway. Past there?...only four more full days of driving to Anchorage

 

Personally I'm not a fan of most newer museums, librairies, galleries, etc.  They become overly focused on their architecture, graphics, techy displays, etc.  

 

 

[foresterab]

It's a nice facility and well designed...but you're in an area with only about 100,000 permanent residents.   In addition there are finds all over the region so while the museum is near a major bone site for years it was a feeder source for material to other, better known, museums.

 

Also doesn't help with the in-house squabbles on management direction and marketing.   Shame for the potential could be there if expectations are lowered to more a teaching/outreach center than a new major museum to rival the Tyrell.

[siteseer]

On 12/5/2016 at 2:50 PM, Canadawest said:

Personally I'm not a fan of most newer museums, librairies, galleries, etc.  They become overly focused on their architecture, graphics, techy displays, etc.  

 

 

 

 

Right.  The Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco is a great example of that.  It used to be a decent museum.  Several years ago, they did a major renovation.  They wanted it to be "green" and have a coral reef from the Philippines and be nice and shiny.  The problem is that it doesn't reflect the area - no exhibits about northern California ecosystems.  They added some California fossils to a display case and then took a few out.  Residents want to show off the region and foreign tourists want to see some local color.  That museum is too generic - too much like something decided by committee.  I don't understand why there isn't a display on the redwoods and one on great white sharks and one on sea otters.  People eat that stuff up.

 

A good museum is the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  It's all about stuff from the area, and yeah, it's nice and shiny too but people who weren't thinking trendy put that together.

 

Jess

 

 

[Boesse]

So CAS closed for renovation when I was in high school - it was the first museum I ever remember visiting, and one of the only natural history museums available for people in the bay area to visit. They had an insect zoo, the original Steinhart Aquarium, and herps. Best of all they had gem/minerals as well as lots of fossils on display! Needless to say as an undergraduate student in paleontology I was fairly disappointed with the new CAS. I mean, it's beautiful inside, but Jess is right - very little of it reflects local natural history, and virtually none of it involves earth history, evolution, or fossils - a totally wasted opportunity for a museum focusing on conservation, ecology, and environmentalism.

[BadlandTraveller]

Its really sad to hear.

 

I think it really comes down to location on this one... they built that museum literally in the middle of no where.

 

The Royal Tyrrell gets 80% of their admission from local Albertans, knowing this I have no idea why they thought such a high end facility could survive by Grand Prairie.