A story in the Joplin Globe this week shed light on why officials with the Joplin Museum Complex are hesitating to endorse an idea to renovate the city’s historic railroad depot and move the museum there.
[T]he existing interior space is less than the current museum’s, he said, based on his staff’s measurements of the interior. He said that the depot has 22,000 square feet of space, and not 41,000 square feet as has been cited.
Standing water in the basement indicates the building might not be watertight, as it would need to be for a museum environment.
An architect hired by the city to assess the space for use as a museum, Chad Greer of the Webb City architectural firm of Corner Greer & Associates, attended the meeting. He said he will begin work next week to investigate the cause and remedies of the water problem.
Those are legitimate concerns. A big reason the Joplin Museum Complex is looking for a new home is lack of space. Moving from one cramped space to an even smaller space would be counterproductive, to say the least. And moving into a space with moisture problems would lead to rapid deterioration of historic artifacts.
But after voters resoundingly rejected a proposal to move into Memorial Hall, the museum may be running out of options. Perhaps the Joplin Museum Complex should investigate splitting its collection according to various themes — for example, Route 66 in the depot; mining history in the current facility. That’s assuming, of course, that the moisture problems can be rectified.
The museum wants one, bigger spot for all of its artifacts. But it had better not dismiss a compromise proposal that would give them two smaller spots instead.
The last time I visited the existing museum, I observed that there was a lot of space used for storage, rooms for temporary traveling displays, meeting rooms, offices, classrooms etc., space not normally seen by visitors. The Route 66 display consisted of a couple of display cases and some wall hangings. Two floors in one whole wing was devoted to displays of rocks and minerals, with miniature models of mines and mining camps.
This is not to say that the museum is uninteresting, but the Depot location would provide plenty of room for well-designed exhibits that could provide a generous display of Joplin’s Mining, Route 66, famous sons and daughters and other historical displays that could make a visit more interesting. The location would certainly attract more visitors, simply because it would be in a very historic and remarkable structure.
Perhaps many items will not fit, but they could be stored and later swapped with similar displays to provide a “fresh” exhibit.
Sometimes less IS more!
Ron, I agree that maybe the museum may be able to use its space better. But if Belk is right, going to a place that’s barely half the size of the old quarters seems to be stretching that ability to the limit.
Plus, if that water in the basement is a chronic problem, I can’t see how a museum would reasonably locate there.
actually i have been to the museam once befor and i remember the rock and mineral display it was probably the most boring part of the museam other wise i did find it interesting, not overly exciting however that is to be expected as it is a museam and not a theme park. lol