Dear Leonard,
Sorry Museum-Lers about the length of this, but I think E. Siegal
does have a point about defining what a museum is. The IRS sure cares.
I think the issue is not so much one of DEFINITIONS as it is of
FUNCTIONS and the need to keep something straight in the minds of visitors
and patrons. Since landing in Florida (or the land of the Mouse and the
Whale as they say here) it has become painfully clear that the term MUSEUM
is being appropriated and used by a raft of commercial enterprises that
have questionable educational and/or preservation goals.
My current project involves the creation of a regional history
museum and multicultural education center. We would like to put it
on the waterfront in downtown Tampa because of the maritime history here on
Tampa Bay and the access to convention center and Florida Aquarium
visitors.
About a year and a half ago a group of investors blew in here with the
concept of putting a "Pirate Museum" in the same area housing the detritus
of the WHYDAH pirate wreck found off the East Coast of the U.S. While our
effort to get on the waterfront have been uphill, these investors,
promising to spend $65 million for their "attraction" were given helicopter
rides over the area, steak dinners, were wined and dined by the chamber of
commerce and politicos and hailed in banner newspaper editorials. (ain't
museum life grand!)
Most of what was recovered from the wreck consisted of lead
cannonballs, pistol balls, fragments of wood and other (ho-hum) significant
material. Education and preservation was NOT the issue, it was money, pure
and simple. We have been fighting an incredible battle just to be
considered for a waterfront site, they were offered a hummdinger site (at
financial terms we could not begin to afford).
In my humble opinion, they wanted to build a version of Disney's
Pirates of the Caribbean on Tampa Bay. To compensate for the lack of "oh
wow, look at that" materials, they planned to build a replica of the ship,
interactive gadgets and a host of "Disneyesque" materials around these
finds.
One little problem hit the WHYDAH broadside however. In their glee
for commercial success they ignored the fact that the WHYDAH was the only
recovered slave ship in American waters (or one of the only?) and a few
very important African artifacts were found on board. The local African
American objected, fearing that their version of Dachau was about to be
turned into an amusement park. The project was killed, despite last minute
concessions from the developers to the African American community. To be
fair, one of the principals was married to an African American, but they
lacked either knowledge, experience or the intent to deal with politically
sensitive material and invite community participation. Their background was
in the movies, where, if you don't like the script, you just rewrite it.
I had been here only about two months when the spam hit the WHYDAH.
However, for the next year I spent a lot of time explaining that we were
not the WHYDAH Pirate Museum. Every time the word "museum" came up,
Blackbeard sailed again!
The same truth apply to most of the recording star and cinema
museums in places like Las Vegas, Nevada, Nashville, Tennessee and other
places. They hold artifacts, but their purpose is to turn a buck, not
protect materials in perpetuity.
Commercial amusements are entering this game in ever greater
numbers, or reinventing themselves as "educational" facilities. SeaWorld in
Orlando produces spiffy educational materials for classes and EPCOT Center
has many exhibits that might be classed as educational. If the public has
those, and is willing to pay $20 or more to get in, who needs a "real"
museum. As Matt Roth in L.A. noted, when museums have to play this game
collections management, conservation and scholarship are usually abandoned
along with programs for the underprivileged.
I have nothing against the for-profit exhibition world, but there
has to be some definition of terms. After much agonizing I asked my board
to change our name from "museum" to "center," in part because of the
negative attribution and confusion about the term "museum." Perhaps one of
the most telling proofs is a recent State of Florida survey on tourism and
historic sites and museums. It found that MOST of the Florida visitors
considered Disneyworld and Busch Gardens (a theme park run by a U.S.
brewing company) to be historic sites and museums because of features such
as Frontierland and exhibits on African culture!
We DO need to resolve what a museum is besides "educational
institution." So is Barnum and Bailey's circus.
_______________________________
Byron A. Johnson, Exec. Dir.
[log in to unmask]
Tampa, FL
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