--- Roy Hemmat <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Here's my suggestion for a possible alternative .. "Museums may not cure
> cancer, but they can inspire and educate those who will".

This thread about the importance of museums is giving me pause. When you get
down to it, I think a lot of it has to do with our own egos. There seems to be
an innate human desire to do something worthwhile and to be useful in society.
In academia, this seems to be even more pronounced, especially with the
"publish or perish" atmosphere that dominates most universities. I call it
"justify your existance". Museums, being heavily entwined with academia, have a
strange variant of this atmosphere.

We spend probably more time and money getting out education than practically
any other field out there excepting for doctors and lawyers. Doctors cure the
sick and lawyers - uh - lawyer defend the innocent and help to right
injustices. (Well theoretically anyway. ;) Those two professions also make a
lot of money, at least to the public eye. Museum professionals do not and never
will. So we've already got one strike against us - high education requirements
but low salaries. While we would like to be idealistic, how many of you would
go into a field where you had to spend at least 6 years in school before you
could even be considered for entry-level jobs, pay $30k +, fight for a position
and then take a second job to pay off those student loans. Compare this to some
of the technological fields where people can go into the job field without a
college degree and make more money than several museum professionals combined,
even at relatively entry-level positions.

So yeah, there's a bit of sour grapes in that regard in the museum field and
academia in general. We can be idealistic and say, "oh the money doesn't
matter" but how many of us, all factors being equal, would take a higher salary
if it was offered to us? "No really, you don't have to give me that raise. I'm
happy making less than my student loan debt." Riiiiiiight.

And how many other fields have to justify their existance in the same way that
museums do? Now it is kind of early but the only one that comes to mind is the
arts. And in comparison, people in the arts are in the same boat we are. The
big movie companies might not be as important as museums or fine arts but they
generate millions of dollars which "justifies their existance". Museums can
make a profit but aren't ever going to reach the numbers of attendance or
profit as one blockbuster movie.

Now for a complete change of thought:

For the purpose of this next section, I'm lumping museums in with the arts.

How many societies have survived for eons without museums or the arts? It's not
until a society has reached a certain level of stability and technological
achievement that people are freed from sustainance-type activities (farming,
building, making clothes, etc.) or have enough spare time to start pursuing
more "advanced" leisure activites like the arts or museums. All societies have
some form of entertainment from folk traditions like music, dance or
storytelling but how many societies throughout the years have had an advanced
"arts" culture with people solely dedicated to pursuing the arts? Not many when
you think about it. And when a society starts falling on hard times, what is
the first thing to go - the arts.

So why have museums in the first place if they are one of the last things to be
developed in a society and one of the first things to go when societies fall on
hard times? This reminds me of a quote from a theater professor I had in
college, "Why do we do theater? Dogs don't do theater." In that respect, "Why
do we have museums? Dogs don't have museums."

My final, unscientific conclusion to this is on a basic level, museums are
important because they are a gauge of how "prosperous" - for lack of a better
term, a society is. Note this doesn't mean advanced, more cultured or better
than other societies. Museums show that there is enough wealth in a society to
employ people who are not directly connected to "sustainance activities" like
food production, medicine or education. You can go into more philosophical
debates about preserving culture which makes for a more "civilized" society,
but when you get right down to it, museums exist because there's enough money
around to fund them. In that respect, we are important to society. The more
money a society has, the more that will eventually be spent on museums and the
arts. As we all know, once funds aren't as readily available as they once were,
museums and the arts are the first to go.

Not a judgement call but just something to think about.

Deb



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