The Carousel Museum

In 1990, the Museum established a Board of Directors, which applied for and obtained non-profit status. A full-time museum professional was hired as the Executive Director on August 1, 1991. In the beginning, the Museum concentrated on creating an educational entity which presented the art and history of the carousel, and informed the general public about preserving this valuable yet vanishing piece of Americana. At that time the staff was restructured to create a department of public education, an exhibition development team, a public relations function, a procedure for operations, a structure for volunteer involvement, a membership structure, a long-term loan agreement, a collection management policy and an archive. In addition there was a need to begin serious research on the collection pieces and the subject matter. Although called a “museum” when first opened, in reality, an “attraction” was launched. An “oh! Ah!” atmosphere was created, but there were no structured education programs or exhibition materials accompanying the pieces. Immediate energy went into the research necessary to create education programs, temporary exhibitions and special events. These activities would create the necessary press to bring people of all ages to visit and revisit the Museum, while generating income for general operation. Educational programs were launched that were accurate, informative and fun. Grant funding was obtained that allowed the project team to research, develop, design, and implement new exhibition material giving the visitors, for the first time, a choice of how they learned about the subject matter. Wonderful theme parties were produced as fundraisers for the Museum, but more importantly, it gave the community a new look at the Museum. We started paying attention to our visitors, and through informal evaluation, we started finding out who they were and where they came from, why they came, and what they liked and didn’t like about their Museum experience. Today, with the use of a retail software program, visitor zip-codes are collected, which gives us information about who is visiting us and where they are from.