>>> Indianapolis Art Center <[log in to unmask]> 14/June/1996
01:15am >>>
>my 2 bits:
>relevance to individual = time spent

But surely it is the whole point of museums to make what we offer
relevant to our visitors and potential visitors. I suppose we could just
shrug and leave all those wonderful museum exhibitions in cultural
history and general museums in SA that ignore the fact that black people
not only have a culture but a history that effects the nature of this
country today. There is an interesting trend at the moment where
increasingly black South African are visiting museum (this was very very
unusual in the past, obviously)-not because of any special outreach
programmes just because they want to. No evaluation has been done on
this-as far as I now-but a school of thought is that we are seeing a
change of attitude due to the existence of a new democratic
government-ie we have the vote-the government is ours, therefore, the
government institutions, which were previously seen as whites-only
(although many museums were not) belong to all of us now. Excuse the
roughness of this-these are new thought that we are playing with here.
It is absolutely imperative that museums offer these new visitors
something relevant to them. That is the only way they are going to visist
another museum or come back to their local museum. Of course many of
our potential visitors can't read (at least English or Afrikanns) so maybe
this has nothing to do with lables-oops.

Kathryn

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