Another way clubs can help small museums is to work closely with museum
personnel to support their non-permanent exhibits, as was done by the Long
Island Shell Club (LISC) in the early 1980's (date?).

The club worked closely with the Garvie's Point Museum in Glen Cove, Long
Island (N.Y.) to develop a year-long shell exhibit that encompassed a good
portion of the museum's first floor.  The club members provided specimen
shells for the exhibits with shell-show type themes such as marine shells,
land shells, freshwater bivalves, marine shells of the Pacific, Cone
shells, Spondylus, an aquarium with living cowries (Cypraea cervus and
zebra), plus dozens of other small and large exhibits.  The museum created
wall, kiosk and walk-around plexiglass cases with consistent, professional
signage and labeling.

Maybe Jordan or another LISC Conch'ler can better recall the details of the
Garvie's Point Exhibit. Jordan displayed his Tridacna gigas; I had 50 U.S.
freshwater bivalves which the museum laid out in a beautifully arranged
plexiglass display case with various stepped levels -- the museum pulled
out all the stops and the club pulled out their most spectacular shells.

The exhibit ran far longer than anyone expected due to the tremendous
public response to the exhibit. The exhibit was extended to a point where
the club members wanted to get their shells back into their collection, but
could not!  In retrospect, the entire collaboration was a resounding
success.

The exhibit got quite a bit of media coverage and became a paradigm for how
museums and local natural history collector clubs can work hand-in-hand --
the design expertise of the professional museum display personnel with the
conchological expertise of the club members.

This experience also added a number of new club members to the LISC and led
to the club's decision to hold its first competitive shell show.  It was a
win-win situation.  This type of collaboration also depends on a museum's
willingness to work closely with local clubs in such a large undertaking.
For small, cash-strapped museums, I can think of no better way to have
dynamic and interesting exhibits than to seek out and encourage
enthusiastic clubs to support their rotating exhibit efforts.

Rich
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