According to Richard Perry:
>
> Almost every single program in the professional training directory
> put out a couple of years ago by AAM is taught by either (1) university
> museum/gallery staff on parttime teaching appointment, (2) art history
> faculty who know the visual art but not necessarily the institutional
> contexts (the same concept applies here to history, natural history, etc.)
> or (3) by parttime adjunct faculty recruited from area museums.  While such
> frontline perspective is obviously important, it is rarely being balanced by
> fulltime faculty who are explicitly trained in museum studies and who can
> develop courses dealing with historical, political, social contexts of museums
..
> Library science education programs, on the other hand, are taught by fulltime
> faculty, usually with doctoral degrees in the field or information systems or
> such.
 
> One of the critical marks by which a career field is recognized as a
> "profession" is that it possesses and controls a corner of
> theoretically-founded, rationally organized knowledge, and that some kind of
> formal training is required to understand that information.
..............  I believe that
> the next generation of practitioners in our museums need understanding that
> can be passed on by reflective, informed practitioners, AS WELL AS from
> sociologists, communications theorists, management theorists, historians,
> and anthropologists of contemporary society so that these twenty-first century
> administrators, educators, curators and conservators, etc., will understand
> what's going on around them and their future institutions.
 
These are some important points to consider.  Think about other
professions -- architects, engineers, lawyers, various
specializations in business -- they all have a scholarly,
academic component involved in research and teaching future
'practitioners'..... and the individuals who serve in this
capacity have academic degrees in the areas of their scholarly
interests.  I find it unfortunate that the museum studies field
has not yet reached this approach as it can only benefit the
museum community at large (and no, this does not mean I'm
advocating the growth of huge numbers of museum studies
scholars... as in other applied professions the number of
practioners always is greater than the academic community that
supports it).
 
 
--
Paisley S. Cato, Ph.D.                          e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Curator of Collections                          phone:  703-666-8634
Virginia Museum of Natural History              fax:    703-632-6487
1001 Douglas Ave., Martinsville, VA 24112