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