Panic at the House Museum!
Christina M. Mason, partner in Herrick's Private Clients Department, was quoted in a Town & Country article discussing what the process of setting up a "house museum" entails and what the future may hold for this industry.
The article highlights that an additional option for preserving historically significant houses is to keep a house in its original use rather than setting up a house museum. That may be because setting up a house museum “requires a staggering amount of money,” says Christina. “You have to be out of your mind to do it.”
While the advantage of setting up a house museum is that “you get to create the vision for it,” Christina says it’s far more sensible to “give it to an established museum if they’re willing to work with you. Then it’s the museum’s problem to keep it going.”