Dear Members;

 This notice is to inform you that, regretfully, we are no longer considering the move to Washington, D.C. at the present time. Our Board of Directors held their Annual Meeting on Saturday, May 10th. For the 10 days prior to that date each had received and reviewed the latest proposal from Washington. At the meeting they voiced many concerns and reservations and after much discussion decided it was not in the best interest of the Museum to make the move now and voted to reject the proposal. Since some of their concerns were about things that cannot be changed nor negotiated under the present circumstances, they believed further pursuit of this dream for now was inadvisable.

 The relationship between The Bead Museum-DC and us has been friendly and informal and every effort in both organizations has been to work things out in a mutually satisfactory way. We recognized that DC was taking on an extremely difficult responsibility since they had had no previous museum experience. They are now beginning to realize what is involved in creating and maintaining a museum on a professional level. The fact that it has taken three years to arrive at this point is understandable and there is no blame attached to any of the concerned parties. It has been a learning experience. All efforts, both in Washington and Prescott, have been in good faith. The Bead Society of Greater Washington, and the DC Bead Museum boards worked very hard to arrive at a solution that would satisfy all of us. We respect and appreciate their very considerable efforts including the 1995 Conference.

 Because we have been committed for the last three years to try to make the Washington relationship work, we have not pursued any other venue for the Bead Museum collections. Neither have we been able to seek local grants and support once the word was out that a move out of town and across country was imminent. Our Board believes we must reactivate interest in local support and resume grant seeking and fund raising so that we can maintain the Museum here and explore other options.

 In our letter to TBM-DC of August 1994, in response to their questions of what we wanted, we stated TBM needed a suitable site for maintaining the Museum on a professional level and a professional director who could manage the Museum while teaching volunteers to take over some of the necessary jobs. Of course this means, to us, that the Museum would be open to the public on the usual daily basis in fulfillment of our mission as we have done for eleven years.

 TBM-DC, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Hilary Whittaker, President of the Bead Society of Greater Washington, have a site, finally recognize the need for a professional director, but they have a mostly new Board in place as of April 1st. We believe they must have time to let this Board develop their organization together without the pressures of having to conform to our needs and requests.

 We, on the other hand, need to be free from commitment to them to do whatever we consider best for The Bead Museum. We hope you will understand our position and will continue to support both organizations. Please call us if you need more information. We are open, we are functioning, a (sometimes) QUARTERLY will be in your hands soon.

Sincerely,

GML:jkb