> Not to divert this thread, but the question of  'how important is the
> visitor' and the responsibility of  "having stewardship over collections"
> (as described below in the posting on which this is a comment) is the crux
> of  the difference between the public and the museum professional.

The "museum profession" being, what, 50 years old, 60?, 75?,
redefinition, or modification of the profession's credos is (at least)
allowed.  So, I might be a museum professional who's principal interest
is in how the public uses the museum.

On the other hand, I can understand your frustration, because clearly
the marketers, fundraisers, administrators, and even educators have been
on the ascendant.  But the collections-oriented rationale for this is
that the place has got to stay open and gather public support or the
collections will be sitting quietly in a dark room with a leaky roof (cf
the New York Historical Society pre-Betsy Gotbaum; the Barnes
collection). Of course there are other rationales (to which I subscribe)
such as one of the visitors that we are trying to reach might really get
a thrill from those precious objects.

>The museum professional, on the other hand, (if they are still trained the way I was in
> a simpler time) are "objects people"

Just like that?  Even curators, I would assume, are interested in
specific types of objects, as opposed to generic objects.  But if I
understand your point, your museum professionals respond to actual
things with actualy physical and historical properties, as opposed to
pictures of things or computer representations of things.

If you are finding, after dealing with literally hundreds of board
members, that they ALL place visitors at a higher priority than you do,
and boards constitute the legal corpus of the institution, then I think
one can fairly say that the definition of museum has officially
changed.  You can fight a rear-guard action, but boards define
institutions as much now as they did in the heyday of the rich
collectors' museum.

>Too often we fail to ask how important is the TYPE of visitor is that we get

What it the WORLD does this mean? What TYPE of visitor should we be
getting? Maybe one of the wrong TYPE will get something out of the
museum that s/he wouldn't have gotten if we hadn't worked hard on
finding ways to get them there.

Eric Siegel