It is sad to see the Museum folding.  There are very good people there, John Coski being one of the best.  I was last there for a concert by The Cabell-Breckinridge Brass Band from VMI in 2004, I believe it was.  At the time, the musuem and the even smaller White House of The Confederacy were dominated the the biggest, starkest skyscrapers you have ever seen.  It looked like a page from a Dr. Seuss book.  The brass music really reverberated!

I, like many of you, also wonder "why did they not...."  My suggestion a year ago to the Director, when I got the doom-and-gloom special report was "to move out on Boulevard and get/build a building amongst like entities, such as the Virginia Historical Society, Daughters of the Confederacy, etc."

There are several lessons here.  

First.  Virginian's Resitance to Change.  Bishop Peter Lee of the Diocese of Virginia said it well some years ago in a seminar at Roslyn when in his talk he gave "The Seven Last Words of a Church."  

"We've always done it that way before"

As I watched the Museum attendance dwindling and deficits mount, and watched a Board which could not make hard decisions, those words reverberated.  The curse of Virginians, of course, is that we abhor change.  Remember how many Virginians it takes to change a light bulb?  But it puts even greater responsibility upon us as individual members of boards, commissions, faculties, vestries, to recognize the forces of change and respond before it is too late.

Second. The role and the meaning of The Museum of the Confederacy.  Years ago, I recall a "Matlock" episode which involved an artifact from the Civil War which was causing some consternation among folks in Atlanta.  At the end of the show, everything was resolved happily by sending it to "The Museum of the Confederacy."  So symbolic.... Get it out of sight.

It may be a sign that time has come for the Institution itself to fade away.  That we may all be better viewing the Confederacy within the bigger picture of the forces of change in the 19th century.  I say that in spite of the fact that my Great Grandfather Hugh Holmes McGuire gave his life in the last days of the Confederacy.

I think there are two things that the Museum brought and that should be preserved.  First and foremost from my standpoint is the wealth of manuscripts, books, and of course coming from me MUSIC.  I published two successful offerings from items which were there and nowhere else.  Second is the 'museum function', of producing exhibits, welcoming the public, hosting school tours, etc.  It appears to me that the first two locations cater to the latter, but I'm not sure how well.  If I recall the annual attendance figures at Chancellorsville Battlefield, it is only 47,000 a year.  The Redskins get twice that many people into their stadium each game.  Puzzling.  

Maybe the third mysterious site will be an academic center such as UVa or Virginia Tech, or even Longwood which is perched 'on the road to Appomattox'.

In any case, I'm sorry to see the institution go.  I wish the best for the people whose lives will be churned up.  A Eulogy, appropriated enough from the Archives of the Museum:

"The Star Spangled Cross and the pure field of white
    is the banner we give to the breeze,
'Tis an emblem of Freedom, unfurled in the right,
   o'er our homes and our lands and our seas."

Randy Cabell