The MMNH office also will guide an even higher growth period for our collections as detailed exhibit development begins. Annual reports summarizing these and all other activities will be prepared. Finding the right persons for these two positions will be critical to successful planning. Space planning necessarily dovetails with all other aspects of the project, and so will be the centerpiece of Phase 2. move into detailed exhibit development, an exercise that is closely linked to space planning and which can become extremely technical. For example, we expect to display living plant and animals in a conservatory annex to the museum, but conditions of light, temperature and humidity associated with such displays are not compatible with certain types of specimen storage.
Exhibits also require lead times for specimen acquisition, preparation and mounting.
To get the complete package right, we will need to work quickly and in tight integration with our design and funding efforts. Once the MMNH Institute is approved and the project gathers momentum, we can much more effectively attract private funds, and the leads we expect to establish during Phase 1 can be followed much more vigorously. But the real event of Phase 3 is renovation or construction of the museum space. This is unknown terrain, so it is hard to speculate on how it will happen. But if all elements fall into place during Phases 1 and 2, then construction will eventually happen.