On Sat, 25 Jun 1994, Paul Apodaca wrote:
 
> The discussion on the importance of museums is delightful to watch.
> Discussion from both sides of the argument illustrate current thinking in
> many museums. Directors and boards often have the least idea of what the
> purpose of the museum is and see it as a place to gather money through the
> entertainment quality of exhibiting the odd or unusual. Prestige and
> influence can be exchanged while everyone marvels at the unexpected. P.T.
> Barnum's dreams realized as high society interaction.
>
> Many curators see themselves as trying to further the academe by providing
> authentication, documentation and research material. Professors at
> universities come to the museum for authentication of objects and research
> needs. The museum directors and boards trade off this aspect of prestigious
> social validation and wish for their curators to be Ph.D's and to publish.
>
> University museums are quite different from private or semiprivate
> institutions. It is regretful to see reference to a "bad attitude" as that
> is an undefinable quality that is used to denigrate teenagers, women,
> minorities or employees who want a raise or better work conditions.
>
> The muse should still be in the muse-eum so that we can commune with the
> spirits of creativity inherent within the artifacts. Museum's are at once
> the noblest and most banal of institutions. Disney will further degrade the
> concept as most directors and boards shake in their boots, salivating for
> the financial resources represented by the Mouse. Curators will complain
> while submitting to their quaking fears of losing an academic, prestigious
> job during a tough economic time and watch the profession continue its ten
> year downhill slide. Posers from education departments will continue to
> undermine curators as they join with administration to sidetrack
> exhibitions into lesser intellectual feats while the new Directors of
> Programs usurp the entire institution. From Denver to Washington to Los
> Angeles these patterns are established. You need only fill in the names and
> you can easily describe a dozen institutions.
>
> Museum professionals would do well to review the destruction of the museum
> during the past ten years. Museums, like libraries, are best as timeless,
> classless institutions that can allow the populace to approach the
> resources they hold and make up their own minds and develop their own
> creativity. Like libraries, museums are elitist by nature, holding the
> oldest, rarest, etc. but they can also make the best available to the least
> among us like a book in the hands of a child.
> Paul Apodaca
>
 
 
Well said!  And thank you Paul.  The march of simulacra is stomping on us
as well.  I believe fully that is for the "authentic" that people come to
the  museum; not necessarly for "edu-tainment"  The past, is suppose, is
not only prologue but theory as well.
 
 
 _____________________________
George Ulrich, Curator
African & Pacific Ethnology
Milwaukee Public Museum
Ph:   (414) 278-2779
Fax:  (414) 278-6100