I absolutely agree. Were ending up with a very top heavy situation that
the bottom could fall out of. The university system is also full of
administrators, to the extent that there is no room for education. What
are we doing???????

On Sun, 28 Jul 1996, Paul Apodaca wrote:

> A lot of nonsense going on around these types of discussions. A gallery is
> not a museum and is not required to have a curator.  Museums are
> suffering from a serious lag in time.  The business world has downsized as
> an opportunistic way for a generation of young executives to increase
> profits and appear to be competent managers, thereby pleasing their stock
> holders and insuring their own raises, bonuses, stock options etc.,
> without having to have talent or ability.  To the dim, this has seemed
> like a trend that should be copied.  In reality it is a failure that we
> are all paying for as we watch those middle managers lose their positions.
> This is a serious factor in the destruction of the middle class. This let
> them eat cake approach to maintenance of our civilization creeps
> belatedly into the museum world with the downsizing of the middle as well.
> Low payed educators and programmer rush in to insure the appearance of
> a successful reorganization for Directors who then collect their bonuses.
> Without an academic expert (curator) working with the collection and
> institutional programming there is a big question as to the value of the
> institution.  Educators, programmers, PR folks, development,
> administration, etc. cannot perform the basic function that is required of
> a museum and makes any program worthwhile, they cannot authenticate, and
> if they can't do that then how can they interpret? I have seen a number of
> exhibits in the last few years put together with these new schemes where
> the objects on display are fakes or mislabeled.  Traditions evolve for a
> reason, they sould be approached cautiously before we all end up as
> department store window designers.
>
> Paul Apodaca
>