Light Station Museums and the Public: Access and Programming

All museums today face challenging problems with regard to public access and programming. But this is particularly the case in recent years with the growing number of light stations that are opening their doors as a kind of specialized maritime museum. The United States Lighthouse Society keeps an updated list of light stations that are open to the public, and the federal government's National Maritime Initiative program has identified many historic light station properties that are being used as museums-defined by the American Association of Museums as "an organized and permanent nonprofit institution, essentially educational or aesthetic in purpose, with professional staff, which owns and utilizes tangible objects, cares for them, and exhibits them to the public on some regular basis." Most light stations would be classified as an historic site or landmark museum where the original buildings themselves are looked upon as artifacts to be preserved, exhibited, and interpreted.