A few weeks ago when some friends of mine were in town, we visited the Figge and later the IMAX at the Putnam. The IMAX tickets now include admission into the museum, so we walked around in there a bit.
Between the two museums we saw a lot of stuff from V.O. Figge and the various Palmers, and I had to explain to my out-of-towners how we once had a surplus of world-traveling rich folks to fill our museums and galleries with random stuff.
Demonstrating that the Figges haven't lost their way, here's an article in Forbes about people who collect wooden duck decoys, some of which sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of the featured collectors is Thomas K. Figge, V.O.'s son. He apparently used to dress in jeans and drive junk cars to help in his bargaining efforts with decoy owners. The article estimates his collection of wooden duck decoys is valued at between 5 and 10 million dollars. Maybe in 30 years Davenport will have the World Museum of Wooden Ducks.
The article is here, but you do have to register with Forbes.com, which is free and may not even require a real email address.
1 comment:
How's the Imax doing now? I got a letter a couple months ago begging for money because they were broke. I went to see it once. My 2 kids and I sat down to see the movie after dishing out 29 dollars and couldn't see a darn thing. The screen was all scrambled. Realizing that it was in 3-D,I walked back out to thye lobby and searched for someone to give me the glasses for the 3 of us. Missed almost 10 minutes of a 45 minute movie. Another Government project run like only the government can.
Speaking of Figge, they said before it was built, it would have 150 thousand visitors a year. The first month it was open, 9 thousand people rushed threw the doors.WOW That is when everybody and their brother checks it out. My business averages more customers a week than that money eating beauty and cost just a fraction of that to build.
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