LCM's trouble was entirely caused by LCM not being completely spun off with an endowment prior to Paul Allen's untimely death and the inheritance of his estate by his sister Jody.
Jody Allen doesn't care about LCM, so she "shut it down" rather than continue paying for it, but apparently she can't completely shut it down--probably due to how its structure was set up when founded, at least Paul got that right--otherwise I expect she would.
In other words, the problem with LCM was pretty specific to the timing of Paul's death and the shiftiness of his sister, not anything to do with museums for this sort of thing as a class.
Jody Allen doesn't care about LCM, so she "shut it down" rather than continue paying for it, but apparently she can't completely shut it down--probably due to how its structure was set up when founded, at least Paul got that right--otherwise I expect she would.
In other words, the problem with LCM was pretty specific to the timing of Paul's death and the shiftiness of his sister, not anything to do with museums for this sort of thing as a class.