There must be a misunderstanding. It never was the question, any museum
should sell decorations, I rather believe it was the question why a
museum should show replicas if there ar a lot of easy ways to show
originals. So I gave the recommendation as Hank (offlist),
Gerhard

On Fri, 14 Jun 1996, Susan Wilkerson wrote:

> Hank Burchard's suggestion that a museum might prefer to sell real military
> medals rather than replicas raises more questions than it answers about what
> museum experience should be and how we want viewers to think of the exhibit
> contents.  There are art museums with art rental and/or sales galleries, and
> here at Natural History we have mineral samples for sale. I have worked in
> a military museum, and we did not sell any real souvenirs of the wars.  Why
> does the concept of "history for sale" seem fundamentally different than the
> sale of art and natural history, or is that just my imagination?  Does the
> sale of one's subject matter in the gift shop cloud the line between going
> to the mall and going to a museum?  On a practical note, might that type of
> merchandise make donors think that if they give the museum family mementos
> we might move the items out at clearance prices?
>