All museums into one

Bcook · **Joined:** Thu Oct 27, 2011 11:11 am **Posts:** 29

I think all museums should move into one location.
Given the current problems in the United States.
Everything is getting worse.
Soon every aircraft will be sold for scrap.

DaveM2 · **Posted:** Thu Dec 08, 2011 4:57 pm

You had better get on to it then :roll:

cooper9411 · **Posted:** Thu Dec 08, 2011 4:58 pm

That won't happen. Many are fragile and only examples left of the type. :drink3:

Bcook · **Joined:** Thu Oct 27, 2011 11:11 am **Posts:** 29

There would be better support.
How many half cocked museums today are struggling? Like all?
Do you really believe in 100 years these aircraft will be anything but dust.
Most won't care in 100 years. They don't even care today! :roll:

Jollygreenslugg · **Posted:** Thu Dec 08, 2011 5:09 pm

This is a joke thread, right?

There's no way that a suggestion like that offered could be serious.

Cheers,
Matt

PropsRule · **Posted:** Thu Dec 08, 2011 9:20 pm

I'll bite.

What if this "one" museum had several different branches so that wherever you lived in the country, there would be a nearby location?

I was looking at the Toronto Aerospace Museum's Tracker at Downsview today, and wondered where it will end up. I ran up the engines and taxiied that airplane way back when, so I feel a little attached to it.

CrewDawg · **Posted:** Thu Dec 08, 2011 11:00 pm

First of all you would never get all of the diverse personalities involved in these airplanes to agree on a single location and I don't even want to think about the debate over how to run such an organizaation. :roll:

With that being said, there is somewhat of a trend of groups banding together. For example under the Vintage Flying Museum roof, we have 5 different groups: Vintage Flying Museum, Greatest Generation Aircraft (B-25 Pacific Prowler/C-47 Southern Cross), CAF Invader Squadron, EAA 1/2 scale Corsair project, 2 C-47 restorations and the B-26K restoration. And down at Ellington you have Lone Star Flight Museum teaming up with Collings Foundatation and the Texas Flying Legends Museum.

There is strength in numbers, it may not work for every museum, it's the craziest bunch of "roommates" I've ever had!!! :wink:

cooper9411 · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 12:54 am

All museums in the world joined together and gave all of us a lifetime membership with travel tickets and hotel accomidations and room service. :drink3:

MX304 · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 9:45 am

PropsRule wrote:

I'll bite.

What if this "one" museum had several different branches so that wherever you lived in the country, there would be a nearby location?

You mean like the CAF attempts to do?....

JohnB · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 11:34 am

While I don't agree with the original post, I will say there are some very significant airframes stuck in very obscure non-aviation collections that I'd like to see in locations where they'd be better appreciated.
Example: Ever see the P-59 or R-4 at the Harold Warp Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska? Probably not.
It's a fascinating museum of of early 20th century Midwest farm life. How many of the visitors appreciate the rare examples of America's first jet and military helicopter?
Three- Five percent?
Now how many aviation museums would love to have either of those airframes and display them to folks interested in aviation history?

And I'm a firm believer in repatriating airframes to countries and locations where they'd again, be better appreciated.
In other words, imagine a sole survivor is stuck in a country other than its homeland.
There it's seen as a weird curiousity or war trophy, while in its homeland it would be better appreciated.

old iron · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 12:36 pm

I have been to the Harold Warp Museum. It is a fine collection of a lot of everything - cars, tractors, household effects. Sort of a mini-Smithsonian. It is a monument to a person - Harold Warp - who valued these things when noone else did, and preserved many things that noone else would. This collection deserves to remain intact. Sure, the P-59 could go to the Intrepid and be seen by many more people, and Harold Warp might be just a name on the placard, if that.

The Shelburne Museum in Vermont is a similar collection, though including no airplanes. A rich little lady - Electra Webb - was collecting Americana from scrap heaps at a time when her friends thought she was absolutely CRAZY. Imagine, preserving the last of the old Great Lakes ferrys when for the same money she could have bought a Rembrant painting! The museum is an incredible collection, but also a monument to one person's foresight.

NASM has Paul Garber, who tagged so many things that would otherwise have been lost. At the time when he was setting these things aside - 1930s in particular - there was noone else consciously preserving aircraft in the United States (except the Henry Ford Museum). The whole National Air and Space Museum is a monument to this Man; without him NASM would not exist (does the Smithsonian have a ship or car or war museum?). Some of the things he picked up now seem wildly eccentric, but they had prospects for a future when collected. You have to see these together to appreciate the eye of a truly visionary collector.

The collections of such singular people should remain where they are. There are other P-59 and R-4 helicopters - most of the major museums have one or the other if not both. Harold Warp are HIS, and being where they are they are remarkably original and have been kept under cover and on display for many decades (I saw the Warp collection in the 1970s). Why should they go to some place that lacked it own Harold Warp? Let those places build their own replicas!

k5083 · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 12:47 pm

So one fire, big storm, or terrorist attack and it's all gone?

Great idea.

August

JohnB · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 1:04 pm

old iron wrote:

The collections of such singular people should remain where they are. There are other P-59 and R-4 helicopters - most of the major museums have one or the other if not both. Harold Warp are HIS, and being where they are they are remarkably original and have been kept under cover and on display for many decades (I saw the Warp collection in the 1970s). Why should they go to some place that lacked it own Harold Warp? Let those places build their own replicas!

I'd agree 100% if we were discussing a T-33 and Huey.
The fact remains, both are very rare (a handfull of each) and they're in a out of the way location (sorry but Minden isn't even on an interstate) and not being seen by an audience that would apprecaite such rare objects.

Dave Lindauer · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 2:20 pm

Put them all together and a handful of people get to decide what's worth saving. I can hear them now:

"That Brigand fuselage isn't worth preserving. No one knows what this thing is anyway. Let the scrappers finish her off."

"We already have another Mosquito, so let's just pull the Merlins off that yellow one and burn the rest."

"While we're at it let's get rid of all those Tomcats so the Iranians can't come steal parts off them."

old iron · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 2:32 pm

My point exactly. The P-59 should stay with the museum that preserved it in the first place and has taken care of it for 60 years, viewed undercover for those who make the pilgrimage. Why take it to a large museum where it would become one of many and where the next curator might see it as trading material or to be "restored" on a small budget.

Some aircraft need to be out-of-the way. That they should all go to the big-city or big-mil-base museums is eletist. A rare airplane in some remote area inspires some rural kid with poor parents. Does everything important have to be in the big-city museums in a "good" neighborhood? Do you think that P-59 was originally flown by some big-city kid? I will bet it was flown by some scruffy mid-western type kid who stepped off a tractor.

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