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Reality Check: Where’s Our Degas?

In my role at FWMoA, I’m lucky enough to be inextricably linked to all our social media accounts, so every little thing people say about us is conveniently delivered to my inbox. Most reviews are positive, accurate, and heartwarming. Some stretch the truth, and others inspire my blog posts. A common set of complaints seem to bubble to the surface of our negative reviews: “It’s not as big as I thought it would be;” “There’s not enough to see;” “There were no famous artists like Degas or Renoir;” “It’s not like Chicago or Los Angeles.” Read on to see how our museum compares to others and what makes our collection unique.

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In the News: What’s a Museum without Objects?

A few weeks ago, a fire at the 200-year-old Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, obliterated years of Latin American history, science, and culture. Investigations revealed the extent of disrepair the museum had experienced, stemming from a lack of government funding over the past few years. Multiple news outlets reported on the museum’s use of crowdfunding to pay for expenses and lack of digitized records. A public museum, this spurred international outcries over budget cuts experienced by public museums, libraries, and archives worldwide. I started to think about the collection at FWMoA, what would be lost for the residents of Fort Wayne, and Indiana at large, if our museum was there one day and gone the next.