I think this is probably the fourth or fifth time that the debate over
"collecting vs. non-collecting museums" has surfaced on this list since I
subscribed, and it will continue to recycle until someone suggests
appropriate nomenclature to separate the various types of institutions which
are always cited.  It's the type of semantic argument which always ensues
when people want to force new meanings on old words.  In a rapidly evolving
culture, language evolves, as my linguist friends (and detractors) are always
reminding me, as if I were somehow unaware of this truism.  I just happen to
think it's more practical to let the language expand by inventing new words
to identify new things, institutions, processes, and theories than to make
old words do double and triple duty, thereby introducing new confusion!
Therefore I vote for the coining of a new word for "non-collecting"
institutions which do museum-like things, as one or two others have already
suggested.

I'm one who thinks that the essence of museums is collections.  I think the
standard dictionary definition is adequate and deserves preservation.
Furthermore (and this will raise howls of protest), I don't even think public
exhibition of its artifacts is an essential quality of a museum--rather, I
consider exhibition the first level of what might be called "outreach."  I
see museums as being analogous to archives.  As an archives is an institution
which collects and preserves documents which can be studied, a museum is an
institution which collects and preserves artifacts which are made available
for study.  A public exhibition of either archival documents or museum
artifacts is a logical and practical, but not essential, extension of the
mandate to make holdings available for study.  That one might want to display
these documents or artifacts in an interesting, even provocative,
interpretive, stimulating, educational, and/or entertaining manner goes
without saying.  But the fundamental function of either an archives or museum
is the preservation of historical evidence--in order to facilitate the study,
contemplation, exhibition, interpretation, education, and/or entertainment
which it can facilitate.  Of course, the desire to exhibit in some coherent
fashion can stimulate, drive, or direct the selection or collection activity,
which is the other reason that exhibition is such a logical (but I would
argue not essential) component of most museum programs.  But it seems to me
that the very existence of non-collecting institutions which can borrow from
collecting institutions to form exhibitions suggests that exhibition per se
is not the defining characteristic of a museum--if we agree that the
uniqueness of a museum lies in its collections.

I hasten to add that I don't want to see a proliferation of non-exhibiting
museums which rely on collection-less institutions as exhibition outlets.  I
merely suggest that collection and preservation constitute the unique essence
of a museum, and think there is adequate tradition and history to support
that view.

To suggest that exhibition is the essence of a museum, as many seem to imply
nowadays, creates the very communication problem which the debate over
"non-collecting facilities" demonstrates.  I think it leads to enormous
confusion because "exhibits" and "exhibitions" are such generic terms.
Movies, plays, operas, world's fairs, county fairs, airshows, shop windows,
theme parks, etc., etc., are all public exhibitions, any of which can be
educational and/or entertaining.  Museums and "non-collecting facilities"
have no exclusive purchase on exhibition.  Courtrooms have exhibits of
historical evidence and artifacts.  I can even conceive of exhibit designers
and education curators being employed by courts to devise ways of displaying
forensic evidence in more exciting ways to help keep jurors awake.

But that wouldn't make a courtroom a museum, would it?

You can exhibit your kneecaps on the beach, but that wouldn't make the beach
a museum, except metaphorically.

So this is a long-winded way of saying that museums traditionally have
precise dictionary-sanctioned functions, and I think the word should be
preserved to apply only to those institutions which perform them--for the
sake of clarity, to facilitate intelligent communication, and to obviate the
recurrent need for these debates, which never get resolved.  Institutions
which exhibit museum artifacts, but don't collect, preserve, or own them,
need another distinctive name.  I hereby announce a contest to devise such a
name.  The winner (if any) will receive prominent mention in an article I'm
writing on this subject and (if it catches on) the satisfaction or having his
or her name enshrined forever, more or less, in museum lore.

I think an evolving language in a rapidly evolving culture with new
institutions and new ideas needs inventors and innovators to produce new
words, rather than the mere recycling and redefinition of old words to the
point that communication becomes impossible.

David Haberstich

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