The Rules

GROUND RULES FOR MUSEUM VISITS:

1) Museum definition: 

We define a museum as any non-profit, government or private institution that collects or cares for objects of cultural, artistic, scientific or historical interest and make their collections or exhibits available for public viewing.  Museums that exist only in cyberspace (i.e., virtual museums) are not included. Art galleries and other for-profit institutions that sell art will also not be counted as museums. (Thank you Wikipedia for that definition.)

2) New York City includes all five boroughs: 
Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, as well the small islands in the New York harbor: Governor’s Island, Ellis Island and Liberty Island (athough we recognize that the latter 2 islands are largely in New Jersey)

3) A museum shall be counted as visited when:
We have seen at least 75% of the current exhibits OR have been at the museums for at least 4 hrs. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, here we come.) Museums seen before this year do not count toward the total.

4) We are not art or social critics:
While we will certainly give our opinions on any given museum (just try and stop us), we aren’t going to evaluate every piece of art, nor will we be ranking museums on their value or giving detailed deconstructions of their impact on society.

5) Besides the exhibits, other aspects of a museum are fair game for discussion:
including museum shops, cafes, customer service or even restrooms if we think they are notable. We will cover the whole experience.


Warning of Possible Technical Difficulties: 
A quick glance at museum types tells Paul and me that we are going to have some problems. There are nine children’s museums in New York City, but we do not have children. I can think of few things creepier (and more likely to lead to an arrest) than two childless adults wandering around staring at and taking pictures of groups of children, so we are not visiting a children’s museum without kids. That being said, all of our friends with children quickly volunteered theirs when told about our problem. They seemed eager to help us, perhaps suspiciously so…. In any event, we are hopeful that we can acquire enough “loaners” to see these museums.