New York State Museum leadership is under fire again. This time from Albany Times Union columnist Chris Churchill. He points out that it’s been eight years since a $14 million overhaul of the museums exhibits was announced.
The plan, which has apparently disappeared from the Museum’s website, was supposed to take place in four phases over four years. The master plan, completed in early 2015, promised 35,000 square feet of new exhibits, a wall system that would make exhibition space more versatile and updated and interactive technology and media displays.
“In the meantime, the State Museum is limping along,” Churchill writes. “The carousel has been closed for several years. During my recent visit, escalators and elevators were out of service. Hungry visitors were lining up at vending machines. And too many exhibits looked dated and unchanged from decades ago.”
State Education Department spokesman, J.P. O’Hare told Churchill carousel repairs were delayed three years ago by the pandemic and are going to be completed this summer. “Outside vendors for the cafe and the gift shop, he said, terminated their contracts during the pandemic. And Discovery Place, the hands-on learning center for young kids, closed because “the pandemic forced us to rethink touchable exhibits.”
When I visited the State Museum a year or two before the pandemic however, Discovery Place was already closed, much to the disappointment of the young person I brought to the Museum for the first time.
The Times Union, which usually props-up the Museum’s image while failing to seriously report on it’s shortcomings, has been beset by complaints from visitors and staff Churchill says. One commenter on Churchill’s piece on Reddit said:
“I am sick and tired of the New York State Museum losing some of the most talented people in the world because they cannot tolerate the working conditions here. I am sick and tired of the nepotism. I am sick and tired of the misogyny. I am sick and tired of advising students to consider different fields. I am sick and tired of empty halls and empty offices with the remaining staff struggling to carry ever increasing burdens. I am sick and tired of feeling that our only objective is providing material which can be bragged about with notables who never even visit us. I am sick and tired of the personal failings of those in charge being treated like state secrets which we’re not to discuss with any friends and family let alone with the public and the press. I am sick and tired of Mark Schaming and the salted earth he treats as his private garden.”
Schaming, the museum’s executive director, has been the long-standing focus of criticism, but in response, the State Education Department elevated him to Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Education, essentially making him his own boss.
“I would think running the State Museum would be a big enough job on its own, especially amid that big transformation we were promised,” Churchill wrote. “I’d love to ask the director/deputy commissioner how he manages both jobs except that … ‘Mr. Schaming is not available for an interview,’ O’Hare said.”
This is not the first abject failure of the State Museum over the last decade. In 2011, the State Board of Regents was presented a plan by Museum staff that was to revitalize the State Museum, Archives and Library. The plan set as one of its primary goals to “initiate reinvention of the the Office of State History.”
“But as anyone who has ever worked in state government can attest, internal change doesn’t come easily,” former State Historian Robert Weible wrote five years later. “Bureaucracies, particularly those in decline, tend to empower micro-managing careerists more concerned with building and keeping their individual “empires” than achieving the larger goals their organizations were created to accomplish. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the plan to reinvent the Office of State History failed. In place of meaningful change came the decision to create a single, relatively low level position in the State Museum: a State Historian who supervises no one but himself and who reports to a Chief Curator. The Chief Curator, in turn, reports to an Assistant Commissioner-level Museum Director, and the Museum Director controls everyone’s budget and work plan.”
Long time readers of New York Almanack will recall the battle this publication helped wage to make the State Historian a stand-alone position, rather than a part time position. That eventually happened, but not before the position was downgraded first.
In 2017, the Museum announced the creation of a New York State History Advisory Group. The group was expected to meet, according to the announcement, “periodically to advise the New York State Historian on issues related to the history field in New York State, including suggestions pertaining to local and municipal historians, academic history, historic preservation, and heritage tourism.”
Has it ever? Who knows. We’ve never heard about it again. But contrast that to the Department of Environmental Conservation’s advisory group on the Adirondack High Peaks, organized two years later. They held public meetings, solicited public comments, released a final report with creative recommendations and led to the creation of the first ever Adirondack and Catskill Park coordinators.
It’s getting old, to say the least. The warnings we raised that the annual conference on history in New York State, which struggled after being all but abandoned by the State Museum and left to the now defunct New York State Historical Association have come to pass.
The last Conference on New York State History was held in 2015. Some participants and organizers moved their conference participation to Researching New York, and annual conference hosted by the State University at Albany’s History Department graduate students. That conference hasn’t occurred since 2019.
The long struggle to persuade the State Museum to start celebrating New York State History Month (which was all but abandoned by 2002) has also ultimately failed, unless you consider creating a logo and a web page with Museum events (and some other events already taking place during the month around the state).
Churchill’s piece cited State Ed’s claim that budgets are declining and revenues are not exceeding expenses, and ends with the following:
“Nobody wants to criticize the State Museum, which remains a special place for many of us. But we wouldn’t be doing the museum — or this region — a favor to ignore its decline. Again: Is this the best New York can do?”
Give Chris Churchill’s commentary a read, and let us – and museum leaders – know what you think.
Photo: Albany’s Cultural Education Center, which houses the State Museum, Archives and Library.
In the effort to bring some balance (if possible), I will report that when I returned with my children and their classmates last month, I remarked on the cleanliness and pride in our state’s history that the museum seemed to exhibit. Nothing was dusty or broken. It was also nice to show my kids the same things that I remember from visiting in my childhood years. The mastadon is still a thrill and the long house, where you can actually view from the inside, was especially memorable and educational. My children could witness firsthand the mammoth steel beams from the wreckage of the Twin Towers. It was moving to say the least.
Perhaps you can share what topics in particular you imagine are missing?
As far as empty conference rooms, etc. there was a large gathering in honor of Black History month when I was there. I was shut out of it but the room was full of well dressed people, whose clapping and loud chants could be heard outside in the exhibits.
Again, misogyny… can you give an a example? If you made reference in your article, I have missed it.
John, what your report here is very distressing to say the least. Personally, it’s been a very long time since I’ve been to the museum. Anything less than stellar does a terrible disservice to the incredibly rich and final history of the empire state!
I would be interested to hear your response to the comment from the woman who recently visited with her class.
As always, your dedication to history, the good, the bad the heroic and the ugly is greatly appreciated.
I visited the NYS Museum during an annual history conferences for years. The exhibits were dated and tired, The one gallery that had special exhibits usually had excellent collections from other institutions.
The cafeteria and conference rooms were dated and depressing. The exhibits have aged and are now historic themselves.
It is a shame that our state has so much history and has made minimal efforts to maintain and update the exhibits. Using the pandemic is a popular excuse from State agencies to not get back to work.
Go downstairs to the Mall and see more lackluster attention to a space that could shine but is still stuck in the 1970’s/
I have been writing for years about the weakness of the position of State Historian. Instead of a lame bureaucrat, and a person who puts out a limp newsletter, we need the State Historian to act on behalf of the army of people who serve as municipal and county historians, to look beyond Albany, to initiate ideas that promote comparative history investigations. I would like to see the State Historian pick up the forthcoming celebration and commemoration of the American Revolutionary War, to raise his voice about issues concerning roadside markers, upgrading our many museums, linking them together so that they are able to tell a more vibrant story, issue significant questions that those interested in local history might have some direction if they care to follow it, hold regional conferences for interested parties, and not be limited to only the appointed government historians; to issue pamphlets or other publications that strengthen our sense of history across the state and be an active and loud voice in the New York State Assembly and Senate and with the Regents and Governor on behalf of doing fine local and state history. The residents of New York deserve nothing less.
Give the State Historian an active and influential small advisory board, a clear mandate, some power of appointment to state historical committees, and the means to travel about the state linking Albany to elsewhere.
I greatly appreciate this forum. It is lively, it is significant, and an excellent voice for our history.
Carol — I heard you speak years ago when I was a curator at the Adirondack Museum, and loved your talk. So glad to see your comment here, glad you’re still speaking out about local history. Many thanks.
I read Chris Churchill’s commentary when it was 1st published in the TU on 3/25. Thank you for adding more detail to DOE’s (mis)management of the facility. The 4 year project should have been in it’s final phases before we ever heard the word Covid. Excuses can be made for the delay, so using the Covid excuse is bogus. The the acid test for the strength of our State Museum is that the two other youth oriented museums in our area are thriving while our flagship museum is suffering. My final question is where is the $14 million? Is it intact or lost in the morass of out State’s finances?
I wrote this in February, 2000 John..
The Decline of Excellence?
by Don Rittner
A few years ago, a VIP from the Online industry was visiting Albany and asked me to take her to our New York State Museum. She loved natural history and always visited the official museum of each State over the course of her travels around the country.
As we walked through the museum halls, many of the exhibits didn’t work, or were broken, and signs were posted apologizing for the condition of the museum due to lack of funds. Her comment later was, “That’s your state museum? What a sorry ‘state’ it was in.”
I wasn’t sure if she was referring to the museum or New York “State,” but I have never again brought a guest to the museum.
The museum halls have not looked that bad since, but the event reminds me of a rotting tree. The surface looks fine today, but the hidden core is disappearing, rotting away from neglect, until it topples over.
Since 1990, funding for the museum has declined 40%. Some of the best professional scientists are leaving, or have left, for greener pastures due to funding cuts, the lack of supporting staff, or positions are vacated and not being filled. Important scientific specimens have disintegrated due to the failure of the State to provide proper environmental controls.
The 163 year old State Museum — America’s oldest public museum — with collections of natural and cultural history, second to none, is in crisis. You should be outraged.
I literally grew up in the old New York State Museum, when it was housed in the Education Building on Capital Hill. I learned more about the natural wonders of this State from the vast exhibits it housed than I ever did in all my years in secondary school. The impressions felt were instrumental in my continued love for science and wanting to work in the field.
Over the last 30 years I have had the privilege to work with (and learn from) many great scientists and researchers in the Science Service: Stanley Smith, Edgar Reilly, John Haines, Bob Dineen, Paul Connors, Tim McCabe, and Dick Mitchell, to name a few. I learned about the rich Native American prehistory from William Ritchie, and learned how to do archeology in the ground from Robert Funk, the last “State Archeologist.” Today, the Learning Factory is working on creating educational geology kits for local schools and we are being guided by Ed Landing, Mike Hawkins, and Linda VanAller Hernick from the geological survey and paleontology section of the museum.
When I was a young college student, the late Stanley Smith, then State Botanist, would often go out to the Pine Bush with me as I tried to learn the importance of its flora. Stanley could see a wildflower a mile away and give you its complete history before you reached it. I had a difficult time keeping up with Stanley as we hopped from one location to another. Did I mention that Stanley was crippled? It never stopped him.
The staff of the museum has helped thousands of young people, adults, and fellow scientists throughout the years. Of course the public at large never learns of this until it is often too late.
The State Museum budget is one third the budget of the Albany City High School. Let me emphasize that point. This is a museum that deals with the collection, preservation, and interpretation of the vast richness of the entire State’s natural and cultural history – some 5 MILLION objects. Since 1998, the museum has lost 3 of the remaining 18 scientists, a 16% drop, and may be reduced to about 10 after retirement and non hiring over the next few years — a loss of 33%. There are engineering consultants that have bigger science staffs.
This is a museum that was mandated in the 19th century to protect New York State’s natural and cultural heritage and disseminate information to the public. We now need a mandate to protect the museum from bureaucratic ignorance.
For years museum scientists tried to obtain proper environmental control of the vast paleontological and rock collections. Without proper controls (humidity and temperature), rocks break down and fossils disintegrate.
In a few short years after leaving the old museum to the new offices in the Cultural Education building, important fossil collections have completely disintegrated including those of the country’s first woman State Paleontologist, Winifred Goldring. It took 14 years before the state could find any money to make improvements. By the time the $250,000 worth of improvements occurred, about 3 million dollars of fossil material were lost forever. I bet there isn’t a State legislator or staff that doesn’t have a climate controlled office!
Is it a money problem? The State had no problem finding two million dollars to give to the private Albany Institute of History and Art in 1998. It had no problem agreeing to fund 85 million to build a new Buffalo Bills football stadium.
The museum averages 700,000 to one million visitors each year, is open 362 days a year, and is FREE to the public.
It’s a matter of priorities, folks. Legislators don’t get photo-ops when they fully fund a science service that most people don’t know exist. Fund a football stadium and the world loves you. This is a disgrace!
The New York State Museum was founded in 1836 and is older than the Smithsonian, our nation’s museum, by a decade. Our museum was a model for this and other museums around the country. Much of America’s early science started here with the biological survey in 1836, the anthropological survey in 1843, and the geological survey in 1836, which to this day is the oldest continuously operating geological survey in North America. The 164 years of research that has emanated from this museum is world renown and respected – except by New York State Bureaucrats.
The research from this museum has dealt with economics as well. It helped make New York the ‘Empire State’ with research in oil and gas mining, economic uses of minerals and rocks, and research in agriculture and health issues such as on pests like black flies and mosquitoes. We learned that a rich and diverse people lived in our State before it was “Euopeanized.” It was the bird eggs in the state museum collection that helped Rachel Carson prove that DDT was indeed the progenitor of “Silent Spring.” Justice cannot be given in one column on the many years of scientific contributions from this museum.
You must let your legislators know you want the State Museum to be fully funded and demand that it be brought up to the high standards and purpose that was mandated by our forefathers.
It is one thing to house these vast scientific collections but you need scientists to interpret and explain their significance.
Our State treasures can not tell their rich stories by themselves.
Thank you for this really enlightening article about the NYS Museum. I first visited the museum around 2018. From its brutalist architecture to the cold empty hallways and dusty old exhibits, I found it to be as uninspired and unexciting as any place of history I’ve ever visited. I imagine a Soviet era museum would be about as welcoming as the NYS Museum. I hope your article sparks a revolution! There is so much potential here for a truly great place.
John: Quite an essay on that Edifice-Complex 150 miles South. I visited the Museum about 2012 with ClintonCountySeniorCouncil members and SUNY PBG Docents, when we had lent a collection of our Rockwell Kent paintings and artifacts for display. It was very disappointing: lacked greeters to guide visitors, poor signage and handouts; and of course, the cafeteria line which was understaffed at noon and offered little more than vending-machine choices. Never mind not enough seating for us ‘ ordinary’ visitors. Dying bureaucracies seem to excel in obfuscation, subterfuge, blame-shifting and well-rehearsed Dog&Pony Shows for visiting Czars. I know. I worked for one for 28 years. Now, they pay me to stay home and shut up (period)
Why has the large parking lot on the east side of the Museum (Cathedral Lot) been closed? It was once open to visitors for a small fee. It was free on weekends and seldom filled. Now, on weekends it is closed, and it is empty. Now, families must park in the much smaller parking lot on the west side, paying $10 just to visit the Museum.
I am absolutely heartbroken that the museum how it has become. I remember going to the discovery place as as kid and looking at the inside of insect and looking at dino bones. I am also devastated that they removed my favorite exhibit prehistoric life of new york. It has a bunch of pre dinos. Even our state fossil. A prehistoric sea scorpoion. Do we Need to do a gofundme to get money?
Chris Churchill has now written three times on the decline of the State Museum. The problem lies with funding and the problematic placement of the Office of Cultural Education (OCE) within the State Education Department (SED).
The Board of Regents are the stewards of the Office of Cultural Education. The Board, despite having a Cultural Education Committee, failed to understand the purpose of OCE. Merryl H. Tisch was chancellor from April 1, 2009, to March 2015.
Great harm came to OCE during the administration of Governor Pataki, 1995 to 2006, with his attempt to remove OCE from SED and as the New York Institute of Cultural Education (NYICE), placed within the Executive Branch. Under Governor Andrew Cuomo, 2011-2021, a bill by Assemblyman Englebright would combine it with other cultural organizations into a behemoth Office of Cultural and Heritage Resources. The creations to be funded not by the General Fund but by a newly created Cultural Education Account, approved in 2002. The funding comes from real estate surcharges. Though subjected to sweeps, the account remained in balance from 2002 to 2007.
A Regents Cultural Education Trusteeship Committee was formed to oversee an OCE renovation and expansion project going back to 1999. A draft of a memo by Carole Huxley to the senior managers of OCE, dated August 14, 1996, was written to summarize policy issues to present to the Regents during the September-July period of Regents meetings. Among the issues is the physical stewardship of the collections of the New York State Research Library, the New York State Archive, and the New York State Museum. The Cultural Education Center (CEC) was designed to contain ten years of collection growth. The document states the problems and conditions of finding temporary space and the subsequent damage to portions of the collections. The Cultural Education Center has building problems as well.
The “museum gallery renewal” plan was charged to update the 1976 museum exhibitions, with interactive technology. The Cultural Education Center (CEC) was to have an additional building, the “stewardship storage facility”, to house the growing collections and staff needs of the State Museum, Archive, and Research Library. Designs were drawn, land researched, and funding sources earmarked, or so the staff was told. With the 2008 Great Recession and sweeps, the CE Account headed into the red where it remains. The Office of Cultural Education had no opportunity to recover.