> My own feeling is that beyond being a rat's nest of artifacts, museums
>are a sort of epiphemonenon, currently struggling to assert themselves
>as having a key role to play in the world of ideas.
 
        Tsk tsk.  How can you possibly degrade ANYTHING
for seeking to assert itself as having a key role to play
in the world of ideas.  That, in itself, is a terrifically
noble pursuit.  However, more fundamentally, I think museums
are themselves storehouses of ideas, not just artifacts.  As
such, they dont really need to ASSERT anything.  Look, this
post-modern flim flam forgets that museums are not JUST
some "epiphemonenon" trying to set an agenda, but a physical
reality that stores pieces of our history... these pieces
being ideas, objects, representations.   I REFUSE to believe
that we can reduce the role of any institution in our
society down to something as simple as the above passage
suggests.
 
Robert Guralnick | Museum of Paleontology | University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 | [log in to unmask] | (510) 642-9696