Professor Elam

Sat Jan 23, 2010

We brought you the story on Museo Alameda November 23, 2009. This is a Latin themed Museum in the Market Square. Market Square is an area the local govt has tried to promote, albeit unsuccessfully. Now the lead editorial in today's Express News is expressing understandable concern about the project. it is $1.5 M in debt, operating in the read, and used money from the Ford Foundation intended for a charter school for operating expenses. The latter sounds like at least a violation of civil law to this writer but….

Our point was that initial expectations for 400,000 annual attendance were grossly above the first year results. Subsequent years have proved even worse. As I say, it is difficult to stop a bad idea cloaked in good intentions, this was one of them. With multiple museums already in existence, why not a Latin American exhibit at one of them?  This is even harder to understand when the successful Museum of the Americas already exists.

All of this speaks to the importance of internal auditing. Once targets and goals are set, it is imperative to re visit them and determine if the plan is on target, If not, can the plan be re adjusted or do we need an entirely new plan?  Clearly that was not done here. But since this is a government project, do we think anyone will be held accountable?