In a message dated 00-12-06 16:11:04 EST, Nesdon Booth wrote: << but he is frankly wrong to criticize educational outreach and exhibition as somehow lesser, even inappropriate activities for a museum >> Au contraire. I didn't "criticize" the above activities and I did not say that educational outreach and exhibition were "somehow lesser, even inappropriate activities for a museum". This is a distortion of what I wrote. I would NEVER say they're "inappropriate"--that's absurd. Of COURSE they're appropriate and highly desirable. As for "lesser", that's a loaded word which I would not, and did not, use. What I was trying to get at was the essence of a museum. It seems to me that locating essences is a fundamental issue in how we define words. What makes a museum different from all other entities that are not museums? It can't be "outreach" because anyone or any institution can perform some sort of educational outreach. It's not exhibitions (per se) because anyone--institution, organization, or private individual--can mount an exhibition. Auction houses, commercial art sales galleries, and commercial dealers of collectibles all have prepared exhibitions, some of which have been highly informative and educational--and have published both academic- and popular-style catalogs of distinction which museums would be proud to emulate--yet they are not museums. I have personal collections of historic artifacts which I exhibit in my home, to an admittedly limited audience, but I could rent a public space and put them on public exhibition, with educational, interpretive text, yet that doesn't make me a museum. I know several private collectors who are enthusiastic, active promoters of their fields of interest, who perform significant "outreach" by presenting programs to schools, based on their collections and knowledge about them--but they aren't museums either. Active, imaginative, high-quality outreach and exhibition programs may well be hallmarks of "good" museums, but they don't necessarily define the essence of a museum. A mediocre, unimaginative, inactive museum which neglects its public is no less a museum because it lacks vision and fails to realize its potential. Nevertheless, I'm happy to backtrack or back-pedal and admit my error of fact and judgment. Nesdon and others who cited dictionaries to demonstrate that "exhibition" or "display" are included in definitions of "museum" beat me at my own game. But you see, I was just testing you (heh, heh). My original motive was to send you scurrying to the dictionaries instead of just musing (so to speak) about what museums ought to be or writing romantic free verse about "what museums mean to me", and I'm gratified that I accomplished that! The fact is, not all dictionaries include exhibition or display in their definition of museum, so I took this to suggest that exhibition is not part of the essence. Nevertheless, I'll grant that many dictionaries DO include the concept, and I'll eat some crow. My reliance upon dictionaries to make this point was a bad idea, as I did inadequate research. I'll grant that some form of display or exhibition is generally considered to be a characteristic museum activity rather than a mere option. And while I still cling to my concept of the formation of a permanent collection as the single most important, defining essence of a museum, I freely stipulate that exhibition-driven collecting is one of the most logical ways to build a focused museum collection. But that doesn't mean I must accept uncritically everything I read in dictionaries. While I always urge anyone searching for a definition to start with a dictionary--as opposed to (a) meditating about it in a vacuum in the hope that enlightenment will occur, or (b) taking a scattershot opinion poll on a listserv--dictionary definitions are only as good as the methodologies and scholarship employed in writing them. I don't think public display is the essence or defining characteristic of a museum precisely because it isn't unique to museums, and I reiterate my claim that the emphasis on display is one of the reasons confusion about the definition persists. In museums, exhibition follows collecting (even if imaginary or potential exhibitions drive the collecting), and the fact that museums seldom display their entire collection reinforces my feeling that exhibitions, which are usually selective, interpretive, and conditional, are the frosting on the cake. This is an imperfect analogy, but it should not be construed to mean that I consider the frosting "lesser": after all, I said the frosting may be the best part! Yet, no matter how you slice the cake, the frosting isn't its essence. Perhaps I should make a distinction between dictionary definitions and essences. Since definitions are descriptions or reports of usage, they sometimes embody errors and lapses of critical thinking about language. My original suggestion about reliance upon the dictionary definition before starting yet another Museum-L cycle of debate about the definition and nature of museums was intended to provide documentation as context. My error was in forgetting that dictionary definitions often vary from one source to another. There's no question that, for good or ill, one way language evolves is through error. If the museum-going public equates "museum" with "exhibiton", eventually "exhibtion" becomes part of the accepted "definition" of museum, as a report of common usage. Common usage is sometimes muddled, so "definitions" can become muddled, and, well, poorly defined. Museums typically contain exhibitions, so the public often erroneously assumes that's all there is; they often don't realize that the public displays are merely the tip of the museum iceberg (or the frosting on the cake, to return to the other metaphor) and think that collections and displays are synonymous. It's no wonder that "exhibition" would become part of the definition of "museum" because of this assumption. But the essence of a museum is its collections, not its exhibitions, regardless of whether those collections are all on public display, mostly in open, accessible storage, mostly in "closed" storage, or even off-site. If an IMAX theater were to become a universal component of museums, I suspect that would eventually become part of the dictionary "definition" of museum. It seems to me that some accepted "definitions" contain a core or unique essence, accompanied by non-unique, non-essential characteristics which can obscure the core, and that's what I see happening when people struggle to define museums. To those who insist that "education", not collections, is the core of museums, I'd say this is a semantic misunderstanding. Education and/or knowledge is the context within which museums exist and the reason they are organized, but the core, essence, or unique characteristic of a museum is its collections. As someone else on the list adroitly but simply asked recently, if it's all about education, what's the difference between a museum and a school? The purpose of a definition is to define in the sense of limiting--to distinguish an entity from related entities in order to facilitate communication. I'm sorry the above got so lengthy, but perhaps it explains the "essence" of my position. I apologize for my inaccurate statement about "the" dictionary definition. David Haberstich ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).