On 10 Feb 1996, John Leeke wrote:

> I can't remember which TV broadcast personality recently bragged on TV
> that he got to actually hold and touch Louis and Clark's compass during
> the production of a piece on the Smithsonian exhibit. I wondered who was
> in charge of letting him do that!
>
> Perhaps the promotional benefits outweigh the wear and tear.

     As a museum reviewer (for the Washington Post), I frequently visit
exhibitions before they open, in order to write advance stories. Usually
the cases are open and often a curator will pick up an object to point
out some feature. Occasionally I am asked if I would like to hold
something. Always I say no, although I have been sorely tempted by such
items as George Washington's hairbrush and Tom Jefferson's penknife.
    Even when I am certain that no harm would be done, I feel that to
touch these things would violate the principles of stewardship, and also
would blur the distinction between observer and participant. Some of my
friends who are professional curators and installers regard my attitude
as punctilious or just plain silly.
    Maybe so, but the hands-off rule has stood me in good stead (he said
redundantly).
    But I still have occasional nightmares about the Japanese
owner/curator of a number of ancient objects displayed in a Smithsonian
exhibition. The items were of such astronomical rarity and value--some
had been in his family for more than 30 generations!--that the insurors
had insisted on private guards in addition to Smithsonian security. At
one point while this gentleman was showing me around, picking things up
and turning them this way and that, he tried to hand me a 3,000-year-old
tea bowl.
    I recoiled in dismay; he, expecting me to take it, almost dropped the
thing to the marble floor. I and all around us were at the point of
fainting, but he just smiled and shrugged. "Nothing lasts forever," he
said.

     Hank Burchard * [log in to unmask] * Washington DC