Well. I for one don't think many museums are "excluding by design"
people who aren't at the top of the "social darwinist ladder." I think
that's a vicious slander that demands documentation and proof. Show me.
On the other hand, museums must CATER to those at the top because that's
increasingly where their bread will get buttered. This is the best
argument I can think of for public funding of the arts and humanities
(and sciences): it's one way to keep the rich from being in total
control. Trouble is, many folks at the lower end of the socioeconomic
ladder (dare I call them Joe Sixpak?) WANT it to be that way--they WANT
the arts to be the province of the rich because they aren't interested
and it reinforces their prejudices that the rich concern themselves with
meaningless frills. I don't want to fall into the same trap of
over-generalizing that some of my colleagues on this list do, but I say
we need to recognize that there is a rich vein of genuine apathy and
hostility to museums and the arts in many classes, not excluding the
"lower" classes. For that matter, you can find such attitudes among the
rich and socially prominent as well, where there really are people who
don't give a hoot about "culture" and wouldn't dream of getting off
their yachts to mingle with museum mobs. Now, is art created ONLY for
the rich? No, but a great deal of it is created for buyers with adequate
funds. This is known as an economic reality, so let's get real. Are
Rolls-Royces created only for the rich? Well, primarily. What's wrong
with that? As far as creating art for upper class Caucasians is
concerned, I must say I'm not aware of too many sellers of anything who
are more concerned about the color of the buyer's skin than the color of
his money. Or do you think Van Gogh is rolling over in his grave because
a Japanese buyer acquired one of his paintings for many gazillions of
dollars? He's rolling over because he didn't meet that buyer during his
lifetime! On the other hand, many artists have been known to give away
paintings to poor people who really appreciated them.

But I digress! What bothers me is all this rhetoric about museums as the
province of the upper classes. One person says museums are the
playgrounds of the rich, another says museums were created to show the
masses how grand it is to be upper class, or even to "educate" the
masses to upper class values, which is supposed to be terribly arrogant.
Nowadays it is increasingly fashionable for museums to concern
themselves with preserving and celebrating both mass culture and
minority culture, which is fine. But I think it is no less arrogant for
someone in the "lower" social strata to be prejudiced against "upper
class" culture than vice versa. I think the whole museum enterprise is
getting a bad rap, some of it from within. --David Haberstich