The three partners of the Chattanooga Museums Collaboration are the Tennessee Aquarium, the Hunter Museum of American Art, and the Creative Discovery Museum. This creative collaboration started small, with the director of the Hunter Museum approaching its larger neighbor, the Tennessee Aquarium, to handle the museum’s administrative services. Starting with that fee-for-service, the three partners moved to working together on programs and later ran a successful joint capital campaign. The Brookings Paper: “The Chattanooga Museums Collaboration. A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: Collaboration Among Museums in Chattanooga” is the fascinating story of their developing collaboration.
The Chattanooga Museums Collaboration was recognized by The Chronicle of Philanthropy in its March 2009 article, “Going Forward by Staying Together: Collaboration among three museums has expanded to include exhibits and capital campaigns”. As The Chronicle noted, “The three institutions formalized their partnership in 2001, creating the Chattanooga Museums Collaborative. But what started out as a fee-for-service arrangement that allowed the two smaller organizations to improve their administrative operations and save money has, over time, expanded in scope.” In “The Tennessee Aquarium story – a history”, the Tennessee Aquarium is credited with “igniting Chattanooga’s renaissance on the river” and downtown economic revitalization. The Chattanooga Museums Collaboration, the Chattanooga Downtown Partnership, and undoubtedly many other partners came together to have a significant and highly visible impact on Chattanooga.
