Education, collection and preservation are the three goals this list seems to
be currently accepting as the most common and appropriate goals for museums.

In our community [a middling-size university town in the U.S. Midwest], we are
getting a new 'children's museum.'  This institution will be located in a new
shopping mall, where it will receive free rent from the mall developer.  It
will feature such 'exhibits' as a pretend hospital, a pretend tv station, and
a pretend grocery store [to train the little future consumers, no doubt!]  Its
planned 'programs' include drop-off programs to 'educate' the kiddies while
mom shops the mall; pajama parties; birthday parties; craft classes; and
school group visits.  The institution is organized as a nonprofit.  Its
business plan, though,  projects large profits as well as high salaries for
managerial staff.  Admission is priced steeply compared to other area museums.
The other area museums do exhibits and offer programming based on real art,
real historic artifacts and sites; or serious science information and
experiments.

A number of local educators and children's physicians are touting the so-
called children's museum as the best thing to happen to childhood since sliced
bread.  What do you all think of such an institution?

Questions to provoke thought:

Is this 'children's museum' really a museum? There are no collections, no
preservation, and the educational programs seem pretty questionable sometimes.

Should we in the local museum community try to draw them into our
collaborative networks, such as the state museum association?

The pretend hospital in the children's museum at the mall, by the way, was
funded by a $150,000 gift from a local hospital's auxiliary group.
Interestingly, the local hospital's chief marketing/pr officer and the
children's museum board president are one and the same

Opinions, please!!