10 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



II 



PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSEUM 



Improved lighting. The original construction of the overhead 

 lighting system of the Museum has proved so inadequate to the 

 demands that it has been necessary to instal a more effective arrange- 

 ment of electric illumination in certain of the halls. The east and 

 west ends of the main halls, allotted to paleontology and mineralogy 

 respectively, and which are separated into panels where the lighting 

 has been thus insufficient, have been greatly helped by this substitu- 

 tion and it is now planned to extend this supplementary lighting 

 to the panels which cover the entrance hall and the foyer. 



Attendance. The Museimi is still visited by thousands. For 

 three years Sunday afternoon opening has been maintained, but the 

 question has been raised as to the wisdom of continuing this pro- 

 cedure. The Sunday visitors, unlike those of the week days, are 

 mostly from the city of Albany, people who have had abundant 

 and repeated opportunity to examine the collections, and since 

 the novelty of the place, to these citizens, has grown less, the crowd 

 drawn together on these occasions are less disposed to make their 

 visits for study and instruction than for indiscriminate meeting and 

 parade. Herein lies a danger against which the Museum must be 

 safeguarded. 



Discoloration of the fagade of the Education Building. Ever 

 since its erection the marble colonnade of the Education Building 

 has shown increasing discoloration from the southeast corner west-» 

 ward along the Washington avenue front. This discoloration is 

 too obviously irregular in its distribution to be a pleasing mellowing 

 of the marble. It is deepest at the corner referred to, and in the 

 front grooves of the columns, and decreases in intensity away from 

 this point along the colonnade. The result is that the building has 

 yellowed at one end and on the front surfaces of the columns, 

 producing these unpleasing contrasts which are obviously becoming 

 more intense. The causes of this discoloration would be reasonably 

 clear to any scientific man who understood the meteorological and 

 industrial conditions of Albany, but to have the matter investigated 

 rationally in the hope of finding the cause and possible cure, the 

 mineralogist of the Museum, Mr Gardner, has carried out a series 

 of intimate analyses, chemical and microscopic, the results of which 

 may here be briefly summarized thus : 



I Immense clouds of coal smoke are constantly generated on the 

 river front near and opposite the foot of Stg,te street. It is stated 



