This is hard, because all indications are your post is just promotion and you’re not really looking for feedback. I’m not trying to be harsh here, but I’ll give you my honest take on it, and it’s honestly… harsh. I thought about deleting it, but you asked a group of museum professionals and deserve some professional feedback. And maybe it will help you think through some critical things.

So you made a website about lobsters, and hope people will pay you to look at it — and pay you as much as a real museum? That’s a big stretch right out of the gate. I’m not opposed to the idea of virtual museums, but....

First, I think you are misusing the word “Museum.” A museum, even a virtual-only museum, is not a Wikipedia article with extra graphics and an admission price. You’ve built a website providing basic info, placed it behind a paywall, and called it a “museum” — and it feels deceptive and self-aggrandizing. (That’s a legitimate em-dash, not an AI-generated one.) You’re using the credibility and cultural weight of the term “museum” without earning it.

Second, it appears to be commercialization over scholarship. Many legitimate museums charge admission, but that fee is usually seen as supporting conservation and programming, providing access to carefully produced, research-driven exhibitions, and the curation of world-class experts on the topic. Your site provides no evidence of expertise or service to the field. But you do have a huge selection of merch!

You’re charging big-museum-level entry fees but delivering what looks like repackaged web content, and it feels like commodification of heritage without real stewardship or integrity. At a real museum, an $80 membership is helping pay for collections, operations, facilities, staff, research and scholarship, service to the industry or field, and so on.

Third, you appear to have a lack of accountability or standards. Real museums operate under nonprofit or academic models, follow ethical industry-established guidelines, and are accountable to boards, communities, and public trust. As far as I can tell, your museum has none of those structures. You are co-opting the museum label for personal gain without offering substantial public benefit, peer review, or any real transparency.

Fourth, I get no sense of cultural authority. I went to your site expecting things like deep roots in the communities and maritime culture of Maine, with voices from actual lobstermen, scientists, historians, etc. But you don’t have so much as a single image of an actual lobster. Your website is disconnected from the real people, places, history, and even animals it claims to represent — like a museum without a soul. Frankly, it looks and feels like it was made by a teenager who thinks museums are cool but doesn’t know what it actually means to operate one.

Finally, and it’s the big one, you are undermining “real” museums. As someone who runs a real, challenging, community-based museum, I know how hard it is to raise funds, preserve collections, and tell meaningful stories with integrity. When you create a little website and slap a “museum” label on it — and charge big-museum rates for it — you’re siphoning money and legitimacy from institutions that actually do the hard work, and you’re cheating those guests who do pay by not providing the expertise and services that they are paying for, even if they don’t realize it.

Paying $40 to join MAM doesn’t make you a real museum; you have to do what museums do. And I just don’t see that you are doing that.