I have been lurking on this list for the most part, but this thread is
fascinating.  Paul Apodaca's post seems harsh to me, but the views he expresses
must be credited for identifying SOMETHING that is very uncomfortable in
the museum world these days.  I am not certain precisely what it is, but let
me respond based on my own somewhat peculiar perspective.
 
I am the director of a reasonably important history museum, the Chicago
Historical Society.  This is the first job I have ever had in a museum, and
I have been in it for only 9 months.  When I was being recruited for the job
I told the trustee committee that I wasn't sure what they were doing talking to
 an academic historian and sometime administrator like me, that I had never
worked in a museum, that I didn't know much about them, and that I didn't evem
enjoy most museums that much.  They told me they wanted an historian, not a
curator.
 
After nine months in the job, I think both they and I severely underestimated
the power of museum culture and the antiquariamn character of collecting
practices in history museums.  I see the historical society as an educational
institution above all else.  That is the world I come from, and I have
trouble understanding the impulse to collect with no purpose but the
collection itself, with no idea about either interpreting an artifact or
using it for serious scholarly research.  To me, this is a waste of
scarce resources.  I believe we have an incredibly significant role to
play in our communities as the repositories of civic memory and as the
pivotal mechanism for the communication of the experience that memory
documents.  My institution reduplicates my personal committments as a
teacher and scholar.  That is why I took the job.
 
But it is very frustrating to see the resources of the place being used in a
fashion that benefits everyone in general and no one in particular and which,
worse, preserves the structure of social relations of the nineteenth century
on which  history museums were originally built.  If attempts to address
the identified interests and needs of all the citizens of my city are
a betrayal of the "idea of the museum," lead me to the gallows for I am
a traitor and proud of it.  I also believe that we can succeed in this
treachery.
 
Finally, there is actually a body of quite interesting and provocative
scholarship on this subject.  Would it be unforgivably academic to suggest that
the work of such scholars  as Karp and Lavine, Rosenzweig, Wallace, and others
would provide a useful frame for this discussion?
 
Douglas Greenberg
President and Director
The Chicago Historical Society
Clark Street at North Avenue
Chicago  Il.  60614-6099
Telephone 312 642 5035
FAX 312 266 2077 OR 312 642 1199
Bitnet U27777@UICVM
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