Hooray for Tim Aydelott for recognizing Greg McManus' post as a
"message from the future". In both the "touching" and "for whom"
threads there has been more than a little "us" vs "them"--as though
museums were not institutions belonging to the public. I thought we
were supposed to be moving beyond "focus groups" to collaborative
planning *with* the communities we serve, so not only will new
exhibit openings not face nasty surprises, but we may actually
understand where our communicative efforts stand chances of failing
*before* we have spent vast piles of money only to fail to get a
point across. We have found, by granting real power to a community
advisory group, not only that our community partners are interested
in and receptive to new research, but that they are able to offer
valuable help in communicating it and connecting it with meanings
for the modern community--and that they are prepared to be more
daring in some ways than we thought we could get away with. And
making honest and overt explanations about the touching issue an
expression of different beliefs within a community represents
another vehicle for understanding. I can see why you wouldn't
involve the public if you were mounting an "oeuvre"-style exhibit
signed by a name curator, but not otherwise. If the "voice of God"
in a public museum's exhibit isn't that of the community, whose is
it?

Pat Galloway
MS Dept of Archives and History