Well-said!

ummmmmm......is there such a thing as a "museum profession" or do our
institutions consist of professionals from a variety of disciplines, trying
to work together as best we can.

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> From: Eric Siegel <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Collections/Visitors
> Date: Sunday, February 22, 1998 7:55 AM
>
> > Not to divert this thread, but the question of  'how important is the
> > visitor' and the responsibility of  "having stewardship over
collections"
> > (as described below in the posting on which this is a comment) is the
crux
> > of  the difference between the public and the museum professional.
>
> The "museum profession" being, what, 50 years old, 60?, 75?,
> redefinition, or modification of the profession's credos is (at least)
> allowed.  So, I might be a museum professional who's principal interest
> is in how the public uses the museum.
>
> On the other hand, I can understand your frustration, because clearly
> the marketers, fundraisers, administrators, and even educators have been
> on the ascendant.  But the collections-oriented rationale for this is
> that the place has got to stay open and gather public support or the
> collections will be sitting quietly in a dark room with a leaky roof (cf
> the New York Historical Society pre-Betsy Gotbaum; the Barnes
> collection). Of course there are other rationales (to which I subscribe)
> such as one of the visitors that we are trying to reach might really get
> a thrill from those precious objects.
>
> >The museum professional, on the other hand, (if they are still trained
the way I was in
> > a simpler time) are "objects people"
>
> Just like that?  Even curators, I would assume, are interested in
> specific types of objects, as opposed to generic objects.  But if I
> understand your point, your museum professionals respond to actual
> things with actualy physical and historical properties, as opposed to
> pictures of things or computer representations of things.
>
> If you are finding, after dealing with literally hundreds of board
> members, that they ALL place visitors at a higher priority than you do,
> and boards constitute the legal corpus of the institution, then I think
> one can fairly say that the definition of museum has officially
> changed.  You can fight a rear-guard action, but boards define
> institutions as much now as they did in the heyday of the rich
> collectors' museum.
>
> >Too often we fail to ask how important is the TYPE of visitor is that we
get
>
> What it the WORLD does this mean? What TYPE of visitor should we be
> getting? Maybe one of the wrong TYPE will get something out of the
> museum that s/he wouldn't have gotten if we hadn't worked hard on
> finding ways to get them there.
>
> Eric Siegel