Quote:
Originally Posted by Tacheguy
The federal government self-insures its assets, so those extremely high premiums don't exist as a budget item. Even critics of the museum are likely to acknowledge that having dinner or drinks and checking out the exhibits are not mutually exclusive events. I have been through it several times and saw lots of people engaged with the content. Having lived in Ottawa I can tell you that national museums there also host many many social events.
As for the audio visuals, the costs have to do with data base development and management which is much more dynamic and costly than a static display. Let's not forget as well the research and curriculum development at the cmhr.
This museum is unique in that it is trying to position itself as a go to centre for applied human rights education, targeting international groups such as police forces, military, legal practitioners etc. this is not going to happen in a year or two, but when it does we will see real local benefits. To have products and delivery systems to Appeal to those audiences requires tons of development, maintenance and marketing. And it it will never pay for itself. Will the cmhr ever get there? Who knows. Check back in ten years I guess.
|
The museum isn't so dynamic that the costs associated with research and curriculum and IT management are driving the building's bottom line. The building's bottom line is being driven by everyday staffing, administration, some form of debt service, and building management and expenses. I wouldn't hesitate to suggest that the costs we're comparing - a traditional museum vs. that of what is essentially a virtual museum - are immaterially different, especially is the Feds are self-insuring. As I said before, curatorial work and so on aren't specific to the CMHR.
So this gets back to why anybody would put a national museum in Winnipeg. I don't doubt the CMHR has a plan to bring police forces and military organizations and so on into the museum, but at some point these organizations are going to realize that Canada is a big country and it's not a bus ride to Ottawa from Winnipeg. It's fine if you're talking about groups that are training in Shilo, but who would approve a budget item that had you walking through a museum in an isolated prairie city for a few hours as the only item on the agenda? That's why national museums and monuments are generally concentrated amongst themselves in Ottawa and DC.
What you're suggesting is a big *if* statement. And as I said earlier, I'm not steadfastly on the anti-museum side of the argument. I've just been around long enough to know that when bureaucrats and politicians start talking about how the expenditure of public funds is going to start putting our city (or an other small city, really...) "on the map", so to speak, it's always heavily optimistic to the point of being gratuitous.
Which is why things need to be looked at from the point of view of being less wasteful instead of more. And we're always having this discussion on government and quasi-government projects because it's becoming its own cottage industry: consultants, bureaucrats, politicians, and special interest groups conspire to present an unrealistic, overly-optimistic vision of something, obfuscate and fudge the numbers to build the business, political, and need case, then seek funding for the most grandiose proposal they can cobble together instead of everybody applying the proper scrutiny to keep expectations and costs in line with reality.
It should be enough to say that the CMHR is always going to represent a niche topic amongst few people and its service is as a public education piece. As such, it should be somewhat modest instead of gaudy and garish to the point of consuming its own subject matter, but that's a topic for another day. In any case, the thing is already built. The unwarranted optimism can cease now. Nobody dealing in reality should believe that the museum is ever going to truly attract a worldwide audience with any sort of regularity because of where it's located. Full stop. We can always pretend its success is right around the corner but that just leads to what we're already seeing: the constant redefining of what success actually looks like. It is what it is - an event center with sufficiently non-controversial, milquetoast content that stands as a monument to both government waste and corporate megalomania depending upon which side of the fence you're on.
Perhaps one day it'll even recognize real human rights atrocities, but I doubt it.
Prev
That same article says they exceeded their revenue targets by 20%, and hit their yearly attendance target after seven months.
Linear Mode
