As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her.
And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead.
-- "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead"
The Chapel Hill Museum is closing. It's really closing, says director Traci Davenport. (And no, we're not comparing the museum to a witch; the song just came to me as I was thinking about the museum last night.)
In an e-mail to Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt and others, Davenport says a headline and article in last week's N&O was misleading. Although the museum was asking for a meeting with town officials, it was not in any last-minute effort to keep the museum open.
Donald Boulton, co chairman of the museum trustees, and Town Council member Laurin Easthom still hope there is a way to come out the meeting with the museum staying open. The East Franklin Street museum announced it would close after the town appropriated less than the $34,000 in operating support it requested for the new fiscal year and also would not absorb the museum into town government as museum officials said they were led to believe.
Davenport is unequivocal.
"The physical museum will no longer be," she wrote the town in the June 24 e-mail.
Instead the group is looking for a small office "to focus on continuing our award-winning education programs and creating a virtual presence for the museum to remain a resource to the community."
Its meeting with the town, now scheduled for July 21, is to coordinate a logical exit plan, Davenport said.
"It is important that we conduct this closing in the same responsible manner in which have operated these last 14 years," she wrote. "Town official assistance will allow this closing to take place in such a manner."
