[NHCOLL-L:1963] ironic

[White, Rich]

Doug,
 
My information is that at the LA County Museum, 34 postions were cut.  Of those, only 23 had people actually in the position.  Of those 23, 8 were collections and research, the others were in Education and Exhibits, and one (!) secretarial postion in Administration.  So there, at least, research wasn't the only target.  Nor has it been at some of the others.  Your point about Administration usually escaping the cuts is true.  But I think it is a different case when it is the Museum Administration itself which does the cutting, and escapes its own scalpel.  That seems to me much worse, somehow, than, say,  the University Administration or the County government doing the cutting.  End result is the same for those let go, and for the collections involved, but to have in-house people value research less than paper-pushing seems much worse.
 
Some have, of course, been research only cuts only.
 
Rich