AAM and the feds have already been through the exercise of defining museums. In the early 1980s, the definition had to be changed to accommodate the rise of science centers and children’s museums that don’t hold collections, but <utilize> tangible objects in carrying out their program. Thus, today, the definition of museum includes institutions that do not collect, but use tangible objects in their program. (And these do not have to be historical artifacts, aesthetic artifacts, or natural history artifacts—I am a tangible object.)
If we try to say that the Creation Museum is not a museum because it does not own or use tangible objects in carrying out its program, we’re going to get ourselves in some semantic trouble.
Furthermore, there are a whole raft of for-profit “museums” in existence out there too—one of the most notable is probably the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. How do we consider those museums?
Just more for us to chew on.
Claudia