The New Mexico Association of Museums (NMAM), in partnership with the Museum of New Mexico, has created a pilot program to help small and rural museums in the state increase their professional knowledge and to increase communication and cultural resource sharing among museums and other cultural institutions. The program benefited all the museums in New Mexico through professional development workshops, a new NMAM listserv, and improvements to the NMAM Web site.

The Project Coordinator, M. Susan Barger, has assisted museums throughout the state through the program’s listserv and other outreach activities. Barger says she has had contact with 92 museums and cultural institutions, mostly in New Mexico, with a few in the neighboring states of Colorado, Arizona, and Chihuahua, Mexico.

Six museums received special attention as participant museums. Of the six participating museums in this year's program, three had already been through the Conservation Assessment Program. Two more have now been CAPped, and the last has applied. One museum has received provisional accreditation while in the program. Barger recently visited the museums to assess their progress. She reports that three new roofs and one new HVAC system, as well as various grants to address building issues, have resulted. The participant museums each received environmental monitoring equipment and mentoring from the project coordinator and from consultants.

The Carlsbad Museum and Art Center received from the City of Carlsbad capital funds up to $150,000 for a new HVAC system. Virginia Dodier reports, "As Museum Director, I have been involved in consultation, planning, specifications, bid review, etc., with the architect, heating and cooling technician, and contractors. Climate-monitoring equipment and software provided by the NMAM-MNM/IMLS program, plus advice from professionals associated with the program, has enabled me to make informed, cost-effective and cost-saving decisions, particularly in the area of humidity control."

The Museum Infrastructure Project has held four workshops over the last year, covering collections care, exhibits (including traveling exhibits), museum environments, and museum security. About 150 people have attended from all around New Mexico and surrounding states, enabling museums with similar problems to connect despite their distance from each other.

Additions are being made to the NMAM Web site (nmmuseums.org) that will provide assistance to the museums in the state in the areas of collections care, security, and exhibitions. The Web site will also have a page listing traveling exhibitions available from all museums in New Mexico.

The NMAM Listserv functions as a way to distribute information and encourage communication among cultural institutions. It is experimenting with gathering questions on collections care, which will then be answered by an expert. If that is successful, Barger says she hopes to repeat the process with an entomologist.

The project is funded by a 2001 National Leadership (Professional Practices) Grant from IMLS. IMLS has extended the program through April, and the NMAM Board is lining up four more museums. Meanwhile the original six are continuing under a new program funded by a grant from MetLife to TREX, the Museum of New Mexico’s Traveling Exhibitions Program and the NMAM partner in the current IMLS grant.

The New Mexico project serves as a prototype for several similar programs that received leadership grants this year.

“We hope to see this program institutionalized,” Barger says of the Museum Infrastructure Project. “New Mexico is approaching the centennial anniversary of statehood and we would like to see all the museums in the state get assistance to prepare for this event and beyond. Our small museums hold an important history of the West that is rapidly being lost. We want to see our cultural treasures cared for and preserved for posterity.”

All the participants agree that the greatest benefit of this project has been the increased camaraderie among museum people in the state. D. Ray Blakely, director of the Herzstein Memorial Museum in Clayton, New Mexico, said, “A primary benefit of this pilot project is not necessarily the new knowledge I have gained, rather, it is the networking I have accomplished. Although at times I feel overwhelmed with my myriad problems, it is enlightening to learn that all museums, large and small, have similar concerns and that in every instance someone else has a bigger problem than I do. (At least I don’t have to chase wild animals out of my collection.) ”

Photos: The Carlsbad Museum and Art Center in Carlsbad, New Mexico, a participant museum. Photos (and digital work) by Virginia Dodier.

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