On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 18:47:35 -0500, Indigo Nights wrote:
>Ok, dish, Gene! What was Ms. Janice doing in YOUR
>closet?
Why, cataloguing the skeletons, of course!
Seriously, when Janice Klein weighs in on a subject, the matter comes
pretty close to being settled. She brings the focus back to the audience,
where it should have been all along.
Re: Ugly Ties
Nice! Another good site is www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/4026/
Re: Pish-Posh
No offense taken. I've enjoyed the jousting!
On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 18:47:35 -0500, David Haynes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>OK, Eugene, by this definition the majority of university-associated
>facilities that collect, identify, store, and make available to
>researchers natural history specimens--jar after jar of dead turtles, for
>instance--are not museums unless they have some of their stuff in a case
>out in the hall. Am I reading your viewpoint correctly? Best. [yet
>another] David H.
Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. What you have described I would
call a research institute. These are wonderful, vital, and -- dare I say --
important things. But unless they serve a public audience through
exhibition, they are not museums.
(A single institution can be both, of course. The Field Museum, where I
and various of my co-conspirators once worked, had acres of public exhibits
as well as scores of behind-the-scenes researchers.)
I would go a step further. The exhibit program must be a significant part
of the institution's efforts in order to qualify as a "museum." What
is "sigificant"? Well, I suppose that's subjective. (As opposed to the
rest of this discussion, which has been the absolute model of
objectivity!) But I would apply a two-pronged test. The exhibits must A)
be an attraction in and of themselves, and B) be intended for a broad,
public audience.
So an academic department, with display cases that are only seen by
students or others allowed access to the building, is not a museum. A
public building, such as a library, that has some exhibits filling in the
dead spots is not a museum. A building, such as an airport, with displays
in the waiting area to occupy people who came for some other purpose is not
a museum. Now I hasten to add, all of these exhibits can be quite
wonderful. I do not belittle them in the least. But they are incidental
to the organizations' true functions. In order to be a museum, public
exhibits must be your purpose -- or, at least, a major purpose -- for
existing.
-- Eugene Dillenburg
"Pissing People Off Since 1960"
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