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My recent statement questioning the importance of museums has elicited a
labyrinthine thread of responses.
 
Some detected a negative slant to my original message. Calling our collections
"rat's nests" might not seem too flattering -- at least to those who are not
rats. One of the fondest memories of my youth is of a school trip to Chicago to
visit to the Field Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science and
Industry. It wasn't the organization of the exhibits, but the brute fact of it
all, that opened my eyes to a depth of the universe I had little dreamt of. We
already have one social vehicle dedicated to education: may a hundred flowers
blossom and museums sail a different course. Don*t make them be schools, or
tourist attractions, or contributors to the gross national product. I concur
with Robbin Murphy in considering museums "useful utilities" -- information
utilities. If we can just hang on for a little longer...
 
One respondent suggested that I get out of the museum business if I don't pledge
allegiance to the institution's overwhelming importance. Her comment reminded me
of a recent kafuffle we went through in the Alberta (Canada) museum community.
The Alberta provincial government is arch-conservative, with some legislative
members gunning for anything that smacks of culture. When our provincial museum
association (which is generously funded by the provincial government) published
the proceeds of a forum in which appeared a comment that "government museums
stifle creativity," we had hell to pay from the chief bureaucrat, who feared
that the comment will be fodder for the red-necks.
 
But we can't have it both ways: we can't presume intellectual importance, and be
afraid to speak our minds.
 
The most grating reply, for me, has been Elaine Winters' uppercase diatribe that
the discussion was getting too wordy. I rather enjoy the words (as long as, like
Bayla Singer said, they are not "endless screens of stuff we saw before").
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can never hurt us.
 
     jim swanson
       whyte museum of the canadian rockies
         banff, alberta