I rather think that the Skunk has been hovering around the musuem picnic for some time now. A major trend that I have seen over the years has been for musuems and some historical venues to de-emphasize their collections as "props" worthy more as eye candy to dress up the mise en scene. What carries the weight in these marketing laden days are name artists with currency (that sells tickets) and transforming musuems into digital/computer/virtual exhibitions where the display is equated with content. Not that there is something entirely wrong with that - but when the high-tech stuff is given loads of dollars and some traditional collections/research departments are cut down to under bare bones staffing and resources, then you know that the skunk is definitely nibbling at the tablecloth. Even in historical living history musuems collections are more and more seen as stage "props" and in consequence as something less real, less than essential, and more "consumable". Directors talk of competing with theme parks and Disney for the visitor's dollar and how something "new" must be done to dress up the "old".

In this climate is there any suprise that the meaning of collections and objects are being transformed before our eyes? That those things that are less than marketable are seen as encumberances rather than artistic or historic documents?

Somehow the skunk has made it all smell more about money and consumerism than about learning and education.

This is a trend that I only see deepening at this point. So perhaps if your ambition is to become a musuem director you need to get that MBA and a marketing background instead of the musuem education, history, or art history degree.

In a country where we sell coffee at $4.95 a cup in Starbucks, and bottled water for $2.95, and buy other advertising driven comodities that defy logic, that the corporate mentality and it's product emphaisis was long due to leach into education and museums. And this skunk also carries it's own subtle and  insidious form of censorship, an odor that permeates everything around, where the dollar is the highest good.

Cheers!
Dave