Income Generation and Car Parking Museums

Recent figures showing that car parks generate tens of millions of ££s for local councils. E.G.

Norfolk and Waveney councils receive £11m in parking charges

see http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/norfolk_and_waveney_councils_receive_11m_in_parking_charges_1_1007197

It appears that only a fraction of this income is spent on the maintenance of the car parks.

The Museum of Unreason therefore proposes that every council renames each one as 'The [insert name here] Car Park Museum'. The income will then go into the cultural budget and subsidise the non-profit making museums owned by the councils. ERGO there will never be any need to close a public museum ever again. Simple.

Museum of Car Parking Spaces

A complete lack of demand should never get in the way of creating a new museum. The world needs more museums. Lets get together and create the Museum of Car Parking Spaces. Please visit the museum and submit your favourite car parking spaces and develop a world collection. They can be unusual ones, favourite ones, ones typical of an area - or any use of space by a car. This will enable us to build up a rare and beautiful collection of the world's hidden heritage.
https://sites.google.com/site/​museumofcarparkingspaces

Its All in the Name

Voice of America News July 13, 2011

Israel Approves Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance Project Despite Muslim Objections

Muslims groups have objected to the Museum of Tolerance being built on an ancient burial site. Is it the covering of the site, or the museum that’s the problem? Apparently part of the site was built over by a car park without objections. So it must be the museum. Museums always have a tricky task of presenting the past in places of conflict, they can help the situation but can also make things worse. In this case it doesn’t appear to be bringing both sides together. Can cloudy thinking help?

Is it the name? Is ‘Tolerance’ part of the problem? I bet the Muslim community has a different name for it.  Companies change their names when there is a commercial imperative, so why not a museum? Instantly wipe away the baggage of years of unwanted history and start again? Cloudy thinking recommends a wholesale radical museum renaming programme.

But, firstly lets fix the Arab/Israeli conflict. If a car park is something both sides can accept. Ergo ‘The Car Park Museum’ solves the problem. It will also be a world first, something both sides can share equally (as long as spaces aren’t reserved) and be a celebration of togetherness. It may not end years of conflict, but in future academics may see this as the turning point, and really clever academics will invent ‘The Car Park Theory of Social Integration’ and make a fortune – but you heard it here first.

Cloudy thinking suggests taking it one step further and make it a museum of car park spaces. Visitors will get to drive their car over a museum artifact. What museum visitor doesn’t secretly want to do this? Or any museum curator for that matter. OK, so there may be a few access versus conservation issues but what museum doesn’t have those?

In gentle old Blighty can the same strategy be applied? The V&A took tentative steps towards this a few years ago with their advert ‘An Ace Caff With Quite A Nice Museum Attached’. Should they have gone further and actually changed the name of the museum to that as well? In these times of commercial imperitves its an even better name now.

Visit the UK’s premier national museum, the British Museum. Go inside and you’ll struggle to find anything British. It is a world museum so why not call it that? However, this may lead to more requests from countries to have their stuff back appropriated in the days of Empire. If this conflict can’t be avoided address it head on – rename it ‘The Museum of Stuff That is Ours Now’. The Museum of Unreason realizes this is not a snappy title but seems to confront a pressing issue for all museums with world collections. Surely it will stop countries unreasonably asking for their stuff back, but it may actually increase conflict.

Cloudy thinking recommends the reduction of conflict rather than the opposite. So can this diaspora of collections around the world be condensed into an abstract noun? How about the ‘Museums of Tolerance’? That might work, but if not, they can always start building car parks.

Health Warning

If you take any of the views expressed in this blog seriously then you should really think about changing your name as well.