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by imperfect_light 717 days ago
> but likelihood that any of your potential heirs is also interested in it

That's not the issue, he set up the parts of his empire he cared about so they'd live on (Allen Institute for example) and instructed his sister to sell the rest. She could have gone against his instructions, but the point is he clearly he didn't care whether the Cinerama or the Living Computer Museum continued on. That's on him, not his heirs.

The fact that no other Seattle-adjacent computer billionaires like Gates, Bezos, Simonyi, Ballmer has offered to continue it just shows the generally low quality of people that have gotten rich from tech.
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ghaff 717 days ago
Or the fact that they don't see maintaining a home for a bunch of old computers for people to look at is a priority given other museums and world needs.
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imperfect_light 717 days ago
It's not like there's a shortage of money for art museums or natural history museums, but we do seem to be closing museums (this one and previously the Boston one) detailing the history of one of the biggest innovations in human history.

When you say "world needs" you mean sports teams and personal space travel? It's safe to say all of them have plenty of money to save this small museum and still fund their hobbies and causes.

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ghaff 717 days ago
They depend on people actually willing to pay to support them. Both through donations and admissions.
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imperfect_light 717 days ago
If the museum was open I'm sure it would have plenty of visitors and support. Can't visit a museum that isn't open.

But the fact is that most museums rely, in least in part, on grants and benefactors in addition to visitors.

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ghaff 717 days ago
Except it apparently didn't have sufficient donors and benefactors--or vistors.
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imperfect_light 716 days ago
What are you basing this assertion on? It was closed because of the pandemic. When that was over Allen had been dead for several years, his instructions had been to sell everything and give it to charity so that's what his sister has been doing. No one attempted to reopen with alternative benefactors or see if visitors would come.

I was there right before the pandemic and there were a decent number of visitors (given that it was a weekday afternoon).

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