An open letter to Kate McGroarty

By Kristen Peterson

Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010 | 1:05 a.m.

Kate McGroarty recently completed a month-long stint living at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where she blogged regularly, wandered its 14 acres and chatted with visitors and museum professionals. The Minnesota native beat out 1,500 applicants for the “Month at the Museum,” which brought national attention to the museum and helped highlight the value of collections, innovation and archives.

Dear Kate,

We see that you have completed your month-long stay at the Museum of Science and Industry, which brought great attention to the museum through your blog entries posted on its website and through media coverage. That kind of publicity is invaluable for that institution and explaining the reasons societies save, collect and share history, cultural artifacts and technology, which is why we are writing to you from the culturally humble Las Vegas Valley. We need the help. Museums give us a forum to look in on our lives, to question our past, present and future, and to examine cultural differences and similarities. They’re motivational, inspirational and help generate new thinking and ideas. Las Vegas, comparatively, is not a hotbed of museums and our cultural tourism rates poorly, but we’re still a young city without decades of collection building and heightened community support. Our biggest problem, sometimes, is just getting the locals to go to museums. Many locals don’t even know these museums exist. Then there is that occasional someone who will visit a museum, then express disappointment that the institution is not some sprawling marble-walled campus. Their opinions matter little, however, when you consider our overcrowded school system and the fact that we have the highest or nearly the highest (it fluctuates) high school dropout rates in the country and that field trips to museums help in the learning process.

It’s doubtful that we could pay you the $10,000 you received for staying at the Chicago museum. Our economy is in the tank with high foreclosure and unemployment rates. The other problem is that our museums are quite small. The Marjorie Barrick Museum, which focuses on Mesoamerica and the American Southwest, sits on the UNLV campus and has only one large exhibit hall. The Neon Museum is a sprawling outdoor lot with a vast collection of neon signs, but it’s probably too cold for you to bunk there this time of year. The same goes for the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park, where Mormon missionaries created an adobe fort in 1855. The Liberace Museum recently closed, which means you wouldn’t be able to nestle under a piano or between the twin beds taken from one of Liberace’s homes. The Erotic Heritage Museum has beds that are not part of the collection and can be used to sleep in, but I’m not sure if its collection of pornography and sex toys is something that would lure you for an extended stay. The Atomic Testing Museum has a mock fallout shelter where you could probably unroll a sleeping bag. It also has a mockup of a Nevada Test Site office where you could probably do some blogging. There is also the Lied Discovery Children’s Museum, which has some fun exhibits on display.

But I’m thinking that the best options might be the Clark County Museum or the Las Vegas Natural History Museum. The Clark County Museum features a collection of historic homes relocated to the campus and lined along a gravel road called Heritage Street. Each home is decorated to a specific era. There is a wedding chapel onsite, a railroad depot and brief trails that circle through rusted relics. It’s a lovely and quaint environment that is very much like an abandoned town or a film set. You probably couldn’t sleep on the beds in the homes, but you could squeeze a cot into one of the rooms. The Las Vegas Natural History Museum boasts an animatronics Tyrannosaurus Rex, a marine life gallery and an assortment of taxidermy that represents Nevada and African wildlife. Additionally, the museum's replicas of Egyptian artifacts, originally installed in the Luxor hotel, include a replica of Tutankhamun’s tomb. It might not equate to the experience you had sleeping in a submarine at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, but it’s all we have, and museum officials are desperate to get the word out. It’s not easy for them. They’re competing with multimillion-dollar casino advertising. I read that in Chicago, the locals would go to the museum just to see you, so your arrival here might help get people out of their homes.

I haven’t run this past any of the museums, but will do so if you show interest.

Sincerely,

Kristen, a fan of museums large and small