Getting your stuff in a good museum,How to..

Why am I writing on this subject ? well nothing bothers me more than seeing my fellow modelers dioramas,layouts or models etc..get throw in the garbage once they go to the "Happy Hunting (modeling) Ground,that's why !
Lets face it not everyone cares or wants models ,large or otherwise ,in their homes.After Uncle Fred or Grandpa Jones is gone many a family is stuck with the "what to do with his stuff ? " dilemma. This is especially true of large dioramas,layouts or collections of individual models.Now is the time to plan ahead and help relieve your family of this burden.One way to do this is to get your stuff in a museum before you are too far gone over the hill.
I know that I started planning for this when I was around sixty (11 years ago)and finally realized that I wasn't going to live forever. How ? well.....

I'm about your age, John.  Museums don't want them, they don't have the space.  I hope a few of my special pieces will be treasured by my kids and grandkids, and the rest will probably go into the dumpster.  The pleasure of modeling is the personal satisfaction I get in building them, and I realize they are of little value to others, except for rare  sentimental family reasons.  Most of my friends and family have no understanding of the work that goes into them, and no appreciation for any lasting value.   Crap...Nuts....etc.

I guess that it all came about for me this way because I had already done the "donating it to a museum "thing years before when as executor of my fathers will it was up to me to arrange for this to be done for our beautiful '29 Beech Travel Air 4000(D4D) biplane.So contacting museums was not a big scary thing for me although there is always the "fear of rejection" thing to be dealt with.
You have to let it be known wherever you can that your stuff is available.Don't be afraid,if your stuff is good and you know it,it will get picked up.Start by saying "when my stuff goes to the museum" rather than "if my stuff goes to the museum" and your already half way there.

Hi Chuck ! you are right about large layouts but did you ever think about breaking down your layout into small storyboard vignettes ?(more on this later) There is something about stories that catches the public's and the museums eye.

I won't have to worry,none of my stuff is museum quality

You never know until you try !

When I started building large scale dioramas there was no question about what I was trying to achieve.Huge 4X6 foot dioramas only have one destination.
Besides the museum thing, my other personal goal was to model like Shep Paine ,who's work I had admired for years and years.I had heard through the grapevine that he was retiring from modeling and he had let it be known that he wanted someone else to pick up the ball and run with it for awhile.I was one of those who wanted to take up the challenge.
My options were do it and write a book about it too,when it was finished,or take a more modern approach and do the modeling in real time and post it free on as many websites as I could reasonably handle.(this aspect now takes up a good 50% of my modeling time and is not recommended for weekend modelers.)
This approach has been more than successful for me especially when I look at the number of my photobucket hits that are recorded or the kind words of my fellow modelers that are posted to my threads on the websites.
One thing I have learned though is that "you can't please all of the people all of the time" so don't even bother to try !

Mission Accomplished !
How do I know this ? I have three dioramas now in the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum ,our national museum in Ottawa here in Canada, and a fourth on its way this fall.
How do I know that Shep approves ? Well ..
He appraised my work for the museum and valued it ,in dollar terms , right up there with what he was getting for his best stuff years ago.
Yes Shep the ball got picked up.....

A lot of the feedback that I get on this subject especially from dioramists(word?) and the RR layout guys is that there stuff can't be moved or the museums that they have already contacted have no room for such large pieces.
Have you ever thought of breaking your stuff down into small storyboard type vignettes or mini-dioramas ?
Often there are already, within the larger piece, lots of mini-dioramas going on.Why not just isolate these into a static storyboard piece that would be more acceptable in your relatives homes or interested museums ? With a little creative thinking the subject matter could be humorous or serious depending upon your interests. Later I will post a few examples of what I mean.

JohnReid

Mission Accomplished !
How do I know that Shep approves ? Well ..
He appraised my work for the museum and valued it ,in dollar terms , right up there with what he was getting for his best stuff years ago.
Yes Shep the ball got picked up.....

So you're the new Shep Paine? And all this time I thought it was Bob Letterman or Lewis Pruneau...

I have an idea, John. Why don't you post your work up here and let us decide.

I only ran with it for awhile with a few other guys.Now its up to somebody else. How about you?

Sure will ! All in good time my friend. In the meantime take a look at my photobucket. Cheers! John.

I have made it clear and abundantly well known, that my collection while maybe not interesting to the family I leave behind, will be worth a great deal of cash if they have the brains to understand it can be sold at good profit to interested parties.

There likely is no museum in the future of my stuff, but I also am not wasting good model buying funds on life insurance (which is an oxymoron eh as it doesn't ensure I won't die). My family knows I am surrounded by a lot of expensive things, and if they insist on wasting a lot of cash putting me in a nice box in a hole in the ground, they can either convert the things to a lot of cash, or be horribly out of cash if they still insist on the nice box in the hole in the ground :)

Now my father's massive collection of railroad photographs, that is another matter entirely. A museum likely would need a sponge to wipe up all the drool.

I just photograph them and then tear them down...  I don't care what happens to my stuff, either... They're just models...

Oh ! that is too bad. I care. Cheers! John.

Goal #2

My goal number two,picking up the ball and running with it for awhile.
When Shep Paine let it be known that he was retiring from active model making and was hoping that others would pick up the diorama ball and run with it for awhile, unbeknown to him I volunteered ,as I am sure many others did.
This may sound like I am comparing my work to his but nothing is farther from the truth.Even today ,I still have a long way to go.His painting and modifying of kit figures is in a class by itself.No,what I mean is his creativity and his courage to try new things,which I have always very highly admired.That is the ball that I wanted to run with.Therefore ,I will just let my work speak for itself.

Make no mistake, Shep's my Hee-ro... He inspired me to become a diorama builder rather than a "shelfer" and his work for Monogram in the 70s was what triggered my "creative gene"...  I only saw one piece of his up close and personal, his Monogram TBD-1 dio, which was on display at King's Hobby Shop in Austin Texas for several years... I was rather taken aback by the simpleness of it, if that's possible to understand, but he captured just about every aspect of the aircraft and it's combat history with one airplane and two figures.....

I've tried to keep my work along his lines, in that "Less is More" area and let the diorama tell the story, rather than mske the mistake many good diorama-buiders make, which is putting too much stuff on, then trying to tell the story in a three-page narrative...

One to five words for a title is all it should take... Like, "SNIPER!",  "The Death of Jim Bowie", "Meeting of the Admilralty Board", "The Road to Damascus", etc...

You are right the title should tell the story or give enough info to allow the viewer to connect the dots.When the viewer does this himself it can be a very effective technique.

Occasionally museums come looking for models. The Lexington museum in Texas is one. They attend shows in the South Central and South West looking for modelers to help with a massive model display that they are working on. Our club (Central Arkansas Scale Modelers) got involved with them a couple of years ago at a show in Dallas. The museum representative went around looking at models then found the owners to offer them the chance to work with the museum. To date, two of our club members have contributed around 20 models to the USS Lexington museum. They were hand picked by the museum for their solid build and paint work. That is something we're very proud of.

Wow ! what a great story.Thank you for letting me know .Cheers ! John.

I mighthave to contact the Iowa Gold Star Museum at Camp Dodge...  The 34th Infantry Division (Red Bull) Museum is part of that outfit... They're only about 30 minutes from me...  It WOULD give me an excuse to do a lot of Italian Campaign stuff from WW2, as well as the 34th's being a major player in the current war...

Wow! that sounds like a great idea to me, Good luck, Cheers! John.

Good thread,

There are also other areas besides the traditional musuems to look to donate your diplays, check listings from the National Park Service, National Historic Register, and state to local park listings for areas and organizations that may have interpretive centers in your area.

Libraries and public service offices, especially the local Armed Forces Recruiting Centers and National Guard offices.  I have modeling freinds who have had military bases accept models for offices and their interpretive centers.  The VFW has been a good source for receiving small collections in a organized display.  Schools have also been a good area for donating or lending displays, however, they are becoming more and more PC and will not allow anything confederate or "Nazi" themed.  I had this problem with a display of the CSS Alabama.

John, you hit the nail on the head about going and getting your work out of the house and into places for many to enjoy inthat you need to have a plan and to not be discouraged when others reject your work, it is just part of wanting to get your work out in the open.

Scott