Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 21, 1995 TAG: 9501240050
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
The museum closed in mid-December.
At a generally upbeat but frank meeting Thursday, the DiscoveryWorks board approved forming committees to wind down the museum's affairs and to determine its future direction, if any. Officers and board members also agreed to stay at least through June, and most seemed committed to keeping the DiscoveryWorks spirit alive. But the museum will vacate its Norwood Center headquarters.
Still up in the air is what will happen to the museum's exhibits and other assets. However, DiscoveryWorks will honor a commitment to sponsor the NASA Spacemobile's visit to Radford High School Feb. 6-10.
"We probably tried to do too many things for too many people," Board President Patty Manor said this week in attempting to analyze why the ambitious effort to bring innovative arts and educational programs to New River Valley youngsters ran out of steam. A chronic shortage of money and volunteers and the loss of key personnel also hurt, said Manor, who's been with DiscoveryWorks for four years.
During its most flush times, the museum's budget never topped $125,000, she said. Money for the museum - which began in 1987 as the Council for Community Enrichment - came from a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and through the city of Radford, foundation grants, corporate and individual donations and tuition fees. "The turning point was when we decided to hire staff," she told the board. The paid part-timers "ate a good deal of our budget."
Even a visit last fall by Virginia's first lady Susan Allen - named as the museum's honorary fund-raising chairwoman - didn't help turn things around.
Another take on DiscoveryWorks' failure to thrive came from Dianna Pickering, the museum's former marketing director. "It's ahead of the community," she asserted, adding that the New River Valley is "not Charlottesville or Charlotte."
"I have a real soft spot in my heart for DiscoveryWorks," Pickering said. "It's a really good concept." For whatever reasons, she said, the museum's vision did not capture enough of the public's imagination.
Pickering left DiscoveryWorks last fall, just after Executive Director Paula Wilder and Director of Education Lane Ducker both exited, leaving the organization without day-to-day administration.
Wilder left after just six weeks on the job to help care for her husband who had been seriously injured in an accident.
Ducker, with DiscoveryWorks from the start, still considers the program a success for those who took advantage of it. She said her decision to leave to become director of education at Presbyterian Church of Radford, where her late husband, the Rev. George Ducker, was pastor, was a tough one.
Ducker said community support flagged last year. Sign-ups were off sharply last fall when DiscoveryWorks offered a wide range of classes and programs in the arts and sciences at the museum and - for the first time - at satellite locations in Blacksburg and Pulaski County.
The closing of Memorial Bridge for a month last spring and twin ice storms last winter also turned out to be disastrous for DiscoveryWorks, disrupting program and class schedules. "The enrollment was down to about one-twentieth of what it had been," Pickering said.
Manor said last summer's camps attracted "approximately one-half of what we expected," despite a waiting list the summer before.
The location, at the Norwood Center in downtown Radford, was another negative, Manor said. "We pretty much decided that space was no good for our museum." However, the museum also nixed a suggestion to relocate in the New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg. Not only was money tight, but executive committee members considered the site incompatible with DiscoveryWorks' mission as a place for family-oriented programs rather than "a baby-sitting service," she explained.
The future "doesn't look all that good for museums," Manor said, especially in light of proposed cutbacks in state funding. "If the organization is going to continue, it will have to continue the way it started" as a small, specialized, all-volunteer educational effort, she suggested. Board members Thursday tended to share the notion of regrouping on a smaller level, possibly even revising the museum's mission and changing its name.
Ducker agrees. "Maybe we just grew too fast," she speculated. "I hate to think that it isn't going to continue."
by CNB