Great story, Kathrine!

It reminds me a bit of the archeologists around here who sniff at the Mesa
Verde experience and characterize it as Disneyland, a zoo, etc.  Yet many
archeologists are in the profession now because, as a child, they visited
Mesa Verde and were awed by a trip through Balcony House or Cliff Palace.

This thread on the public role in our museum activities has been
interesting.  As several have noted recently, we tend to polarize these
discussions into either/or unrealities...any hint of popular appeal is
characterized as Barnum and Bailey and any hint of scholastic grounding is
characterized as elitist.  Perhaps the middle road, presenting sound
scholarship results in a way that is comprehensible by a wide audience, is
a lot harder.  It's easier to present a complex topic in the academic
parlance of our peers (especially if their opinion is all that matters)
than to do the research on how to transform that topic and its constituent
concepts into something that will be meaningful to a wider audience.
Conversely, it's easier to buck the numbers up by doing a
gun-firing/soap-making demonstration (or displaying a 2-headed, 6-legged
calf, as I was once urged to do) than to do the research on what the real
purpose of a presentation is and to pass up the peachy-keenos in favor of
stringent adherence to the theme and its documentation.

Thanks for the dialogue.

Tom V.

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