Historical Commission Agenda and Packet 2016 08 03 JT

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Page 41 of 150 are made, or what the admission fee would be, is a decision for the City to make in the future. Up to this point, staff had envisioned continuing the practice of not charging an admission fee so as to welcome and encourage as much participation by the public in the Museum as possible, particularly with respect to 1) the desire to promote and strengthen downtown and 2) the recommendation by the Needs Assessment consultant that the Museum encourage visitors to come to the Museum to share their stories. In fact, the Interpretive Theme Statement in the Interpretive Plan draft that the Commission and Foundation have reviewed was written to state: "The Louisville Historical Museum brings together people to share stories about Louisville." The City may decide that there are compelling reasons for our public Museum, like the Public Library that is the other division in the Department of Library & Museum Services, to not charge an admission fee. At the meeting, most who expressed a view stated that they do not like the idea of starting to charge an admission unless perhaps it is for special exhibits. It was also felt that the ultimate design of the Visitor Center building, the plans for exhibits in the Museum buildings, and the overall design of the campus may or may not lend itself to the charging of an admission fee, since there would be good reasons to not charge visitors coming to the Visitor Center and there would need to be adequate areas for visitors to explore exhibits if an admission fee were to be charged for part of the campus. It was also noted at the meeting that the Museum and Library are in the same department and share a similar philosophy of serving the public need. • Similarly, no decision has been made with respect to whether the Museum should charge for either school tours of the Museum or Museum outreach into local schools. At this time, the Museum does not charge schools a fee for either activity because of the educational mission being an important foundation of the Museum's activities. At the meeting, there was mixed reaction to this proposal in the Business Plan. Some were in favor because many destinations do charge students for tours. • The Business Plan includes a recommendation to generate funding of about $5000 per year by having a museum store, as many museums have. Reasons why this may not be the best course of action for our Museum include 1) the lack of adequate space to have a store that would generate significant funding (and the necessity of giving up something else that is greatly needed at the Museum, such as meeting space, exhibit space, or staff/volunteer work space, in order to create such an area of a minimum of about 400 square feet) and 2) the possible desire to avoid the appearance of competition with nearby downtown businesses selling similar items. Those in attendance at the May meeting stated that the need to sacrifice important functions in the new building to make room for a museum store would be highly undesirable, particularly since the museum store would be expected to bring in so little funding per year for what would be given up. • The Business Plan envisions a much larger role for the Foundation and recommends that the Foundation not only raise funds to assist with the specific capital project outlined in the Museum Needs Assessment Report, which the Foundation directors have already anticipated working on, but also that the Foundation would be heavily involved in significant fundraising to help the City 33