Memo to: The Corcoran Re: Sharpening Your Focus

Imagine a family of Idahoans coming to see Washington for the first time. They check into their hotel, then take a look at what the city has to offer, culture-wise.

The National Gallery of Art: That's where all the famous paintings are, right? Wouldn't hurt to see the country's only Leonardo.

The National Museum of American History: Everyone knows that's where the Smithsonian keeps its neatest junk.

The National Museum of the American Indian: Speaks for itself. And anyway, there's a Native reservation not far from where our Idahoans live.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art: Uhhh. That must be where they keep the Corcorans, or something, guesses little Jimmy.

It's near the White House, notes Mom, maybe it's where they store the presidential portraits. Then Dad dredges up some memories: Isn't that the place they tried to show those dirty pictures back in '89 and then thought better of it?

You can imagine that this little narrative, or something very like it, gets repeated day after day, week after week, as visitors -- even locals -- make weekend plans that skip the Corcoran because they haven't got a clue what the museum is.

And now imagine a little change of name that might just fix all that.

Doesn't the Corcoran Museum of Photography have a nice, definite ring?

With that modest change of name -- and ambitious change of mandate -- the Corcoran would go from being a very poor relation of the city's great museums, with their world-class collections and shows, to being the only full-scale museum of photography in the United States-- and possibly the biggest in the world. New York would have nothing to compete with it.

Over coming weeks, various planning committees of the Corcoran board of trustees will grapple with their institution's future as they prepare for a meeting of the full board on May 23. The board will decide how and when -- maybe even if -- a new Frank Gehry-designed addition will get built. But almost everything about the Corcoran will be on the table, too.

It's no secret that the Corcoran faces challenges on every front from finances to programming to personnel. As a private museum with a small endowment, it can't just open its doors each day and hope a few art lovers will wander in to see the objects that it owns. It has to draw in tons of paying guests.