On Mon, 23 Jan 1995 13:23:30 -0500,
Hank Burchard  <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
 
>      RP, it sounds to me like a great part of the difficulties you're
>having there at Carnegie Institute are as much a result of poor design as
>of poor parenting. And in any case, guards should be able to deal with
>such problems whether they're in  "security mode" or "docent mode."
>      And I think I detect in the tone of your message a considerable
>element of the defensive and somewhat derisive "us against them" attitude
>that I find all too common among museum administrators--and which is all too
>commonly transmitted to the security staff, reinforcing their cop mentality.
>      Try looking at visitors as an opportunity rather than as a problem.
 
Hank, all too often visitors provide an "opportunity" to deal with a
"problem."  You don't have to be a museum person to have noticed how many
parents are clueless.  On a practical level, some behavior
constitutes either a danger for the person indulging in it or a
threat to others or to property; museums get sued too.  Certainly there are
design issues in many cases, but even those of us on the public side of
museums are responsible for -- and to -- the stuff as well as for -- and to
-- the visitor.  We are obliged to be defensive; it's our mandate.
 
>What's a museum for, anyway?
 
Good question.  Certainly we should not expect to be immune from assorted
social pathologies, but it's not realistic to expect us to cope with them
unaided.  We have a duty to the future -- our own and society's -- as well
as to the present.
 
End of sermon.
 
Ken Yellis
Assistant Director for Public Programs
Peabody Museum of Natural History
170 Whitney Avenue
Box 208118
New Haven, CT 06520-8118
[log in to unmask]
(203) 432-9891/9816(fax)