We're a mid-sized history museum and have not yet found an easier or less-expensive solution than stickers. I don't think people deliberately put them on anything in the gallery, but we, too, find them fallen on the floor. The sooner they are picked up the better, so that further foot traffic does not make them adhere stronger. Some people, especially kids, want to put the stickers on their hands, which makes them more likely to fall off. We try to make sure the stickers go on clothing, though the other poster's caution about suede is something to take into consideration.
One caution is that sometimes at larger, special events, we've had infrequent reports that exiting people give their stickers to other folks outside so the latter don't have to pay. Since people can come and go as long as they have their stickers on, this could be possible. But it's not such a sizable problem that we've yet abandoned stickers.
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Lisa Adam
Registrar and Curator of Artifacts
Museum of South Texas History
Edinburg TX
Original Message:
Sent: 12-16-2016 10:43 AM
From: Erica Buss
Subject: Admission stickers in art museums - yes or no
I work in a university art museum where admission is free, but we use stickers as visitor passes as a visual check for our museum attendants to make sure each patron has been greeted and checked into our daily visitor count. Before initiating this, we were worried that we would find stickers stuck to the artwork and all over the museum, but that has not been the case. We occasionally find one that has fallen and stuck to the floor and even less frequently have found one stuck to a wall in the bathroom or outside of the museum. We have had one patron who said that the sticker damaged the surface of her suede jacket, so we now caution our patrons not to place stickers on suede/leather or other fragile material. I would take the audience and size of your institution into account as it seems stickers are less likely to be misused at smaller museums than they are at larger institutions with higher foot traffic. For a while we had two different colors of stickers in use at the same time and a lot of patrons were convinced it meant something to be given one color over another. The different colors could have been used to denote member or non-member status, but in actuality they just provided variety and were handed to patrons arbitrarily. There was enough of a response of confusion, curiosity and sometimes paranoia that we narrowed it down to one color of stickers at a time. Kids love them.
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Erica Buss
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
Washington University
Saint Louis MO
Original Message:
Sent: 12-13-2016 04:16 PM
From: Hannah Corpuz
Subject: Admission stickers in art museums - yes or no
Hi all,
I am wondering if anyone would like to provide their opinions on and/or experience with using stickers as a proof-of-admission tactic. I know of quite a few art museums that do this, and would like to propose a similar method in my museum. However many staff members, and rightfully so, are afraid that stickers will lead to visitors wanting to stick them everywhere including on the art.
We currently have no proof-of-admission methods in play at our museum. What has worked for you if not stickers? Thank you!
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Hannah Corpuz
Visitor Experience Manager
Henry Art Gallery - University of Washington
Seattle WA
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