On Thu, 30 May 1996 08:29:16 +0200  JCA Boeyens wrote:
(snip)
>issue of making a 'profit' as well-something we all have to do to
survive,
>but it does concern me when museologists here start talking about
>clients and products to the exclusion of what museums should be
about.
>They are aiming to compete against visitor attractions like the "Lost
City"
>or shopping malls and movies and losing touch with what museums are
>about.
>
>
>Kathryn Mathers
>Freelance museum audience researcher
>Pretoria
>South Africa
>
Talking about "clients" and "products" is a way of jolting us into
looking
at our our role in society, our "job" or raison d'etre from a fresh
angle.
It does not exclude what we blithely assume we all understand by the
phrase
"what museums should be about."  Saying museums are about "our public"
and
"education & culture"  sounds more comfortingly familiar -- but it is
precisely the same thing as "clients" and "products."  The difference
is
purely semantic, and those semantics get us thinking in a new, and
perhaps
more realistic, way.

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amalyah keshet
director, visual resources, the israel museum, jerusalem
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
date: 05/30/96

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