Stories

Share: Part 3: Planning the Project - Details, Decisions and Dollars

Part 3: Planning the Project - Details, Decisions and Dollars

Written by Mike Spock

While the site committee had been exploring locations, in preparation for the impending move, a program committee composed of staff and board had been meeting to select major exhibit/program themes based on collections, audience and the new museum's focus. Planning how to use, fit out and fund our new home involved myriad individual and complex decisions—some profound and some microscopic—made mindful of visitors, staff, the two directors, funders, the project committees, planners, and managers, MOT, TCM or the Museum Wharf complex, the city and national codes, the budget, expediency, convenience, compromise, equity. As Dan Prigmore (the Museum Wharf project director) was fond of saying "The building is always trying to tell us what to do, if we only would listen." And among all of us at TCM trying to hang on to the essence of our largely intangible culture, "It does—or doesn't—feel like us!" Following is a collection of stories that illustrate how and why some of these decisions were made.