In a message dated 10/5/2005 10:06:02 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
The Met gets so much getting that maybe it could try a bit of giving? Dear Aurelia, I wouldn't dream of asking. The Met maintains a Textile Center where lace researchers can view the collection on an expensively maintained data base, in a comfortable, carpeted room. Then the visitor can consult the library and sit at the desk and read rare lace books whose value is such that they are kept locked up in a cabinet. An administrative assistant sits at a desk and makes appointments for us to visit and prints out pictures of lace for us to buy. A staff of people, all with graduate degrees, who have to be paid enough to rent apartments in New York, takes out lace and places it on tables so that we can view it. Then they put it away in conservationally correct and very expensive storage. Every day they spend time checking the machines that measure humidity and making charts to document the climate so that it can be controlled and the lace won't rot. They store 5000 pieces of historical lace on some of the most expensive real estate in the world so that they can make it available for study. They employ a genius to construct special boxes of acid free materials to store lace in. A graduate of a Collections Care Masters Degree program fashions special storage mounts of muslin to properly support awkward lace collars. They set up microscopes that cost $30,000 so that we can view details of the lace on a monitor, and discuss them. When we visit, expensively educated people attend us at all times, turning over the lace, bringing us ladders, magnifying glasses and copy stands. Perhaps you recall your visit to the center where after some unpleasantness associated with an uninformed guard, the heroic Calvin, a unionized employee with full benefits, figured out how to bring you, in a wheel chair using an elevator and taking you through the non-public areas of the museum to the Center. Afterward, the world's greatest authority on tapestries, who probably would have preferred to be planning a tapestry exhibit, launched a full investigation into the unpleasantness that had required Calvin to perform heroically. Hours were spent. Later, our assistant manager spent hours of her time trying to get a definitive answer from Security and the NY Fire Department about how we would have evacuated you in the wheel chair if there had been a fire during your visit. You were not present, I believe, for the visit of the IOLI, the previous year when the entire staff and all the volunteers were there to supervise the visit, in which at least 50 pieces of lace were displayed in three rooms. Three men and a hand truck had been required to extricate the Diana and Endymion coverlet for our viewing. When Dr. Bertha, of our party, became lost, squads of security men were dispatched on a search and rescue operation, and people from another department found her and accompanied her to the Ratti so she wouldn't get lost again. For all of this, there has been no charge. Is it any wonder that they have had to raise the price of the "suggested donation" for entrance since our visits? Not that we ever pay the full suggested amount. My greatest fear is that a funds crisis such as that posed by the sudden drop off of tourism after 9/11 might result in some curtailment of these services. Philippe di Montebello is probably drinking wine with some rich person he doesn't like very much, right now, just to keep the lace services flowing. Devon - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
