Andrew S. Richmond have announced "that that the primary reason for museums and similar institutions to exist is to *preserve* its holdings."  The evidence is that "if something is not preserved, it cannot be exhibited or studied." Fritz Waidacher have answered "Certainly, no doubt. But this is only a premise, not a goal."

I have always thought that the objects people's insistence that the preserving of objects as the first mission of the museum is rather ridiculous. It is an oversimplification of a very complicated activity which, indeed, ends up with collections of objects such as stone axes or art works. However, the collecting of objects is a pretext for something else.

Today I have read an article of Eric Davis, " Museum and social control in Iraq" in *Commemorations: The politics of national identity*, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1994. Davis shows how the museums of Iraq have been used by the regimes, British or that of Saddam Husayn, as means for social control. "Whether relating to "hight culture" in the form of Iraqi Museum or the 'Abbasid Museum, or "low culture" in the form of the Costume and Folklore Museum or the House of Popular Culture, the regime has used the representation of the past to diffuse very well-defined ideological messages to the populace at large." (p. 101) Could it be said more clearly that the reality of museums is very comprehensive.

In the one end we have those who fund the memory institutions as museums, in the other end we have the visitors. In between, there we are, dear Museum-L'ers, occupied with object management or education. 

Jan af Burén
The Swedish National Art Museums
Box 16176
S-103 24 STOCKHOLM
Sweden
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