Goodwood visit – just a few random thoughts

After a regular guided tour of Goodwood during our Heritage Bus tour, the “behind the scene” visit of the museum felt like a perfect supplement to understand things better. Indeed, it is one useful thing to learn about the history of the house, its different owners, etc., but it is another interesting aspect to hear about how the museum functions, why things are the way they are, and what projects are waiting in the drawers.
What I learned is that Goodwood is considered to be a small museum, with about two hundred volunteers and six people on staff. Its annual budget is 0.5 million that need to be gathered each year. That budget covers operational expenses only. The visit fees are not enough to cover such a budget, and the additional “income” comes mostly from rentals and fund-raising events, such as the “An Evening under the Oaks” (which just took place I believe; the concept sounds great, but it is still a little too expensive for college students).
Because the money covers only the operational needs of the museum, there are no funds available for any research. Some projects exist though, but they cannot be undertaken right now. For instance, one idea is to study the African Americans that used to work on the plantation or in the house. There is also a project to digitize the collection of photographs that the museum owns and put them online – akin to the Archives’ Florida Memory Project does – but this also requires additional funding and materials.
On the brighter side, the “carriage house” is under construction, and will be able to host events for up to three hundred people – which will eventually increase the number of rentals/events. There is also a project to restore the water tower, even though it is not sure yet what will be done with it.
I truly do love Goodwood, and I am never tired of going back to that place. But I can also understand that not everybody sees it that way, and that once they have been there, they do not really go back. However, it seems that the museum hopes its visitors will come back, over and over again. I guess my greatest curiosity today, is how that would be possible. Except for a few “Goodwood-geeks” (I know there are some around here, and I might even be one of them), what would drive people to come back? The core of the visit is the main house, and it is furnished with a permanent exhibition. There is nothing that really changes x-time per year. Yes, there is that small room on the North side, which hosts different mini-exhibits, but is that enough to bring people back? I do not think so.
Of course, I do not have any answers, just lots of questions. And that is mostly what our second visit to Goodwood brought to my mind.