In response to Mary Case's question "Are collections the audience?" I'm assuming she means that the audience is who we are responsible to e.g. visitors, scholars, volunteers? I'm a conservator and within the conservation community there is a perception, idea, ethic (I can't decide on the right noun)that "we" conservators are the spokesman for the artifact, that our main responsibility lies with the artifact and it's long-term preservation. If you follow this line of reasoning far enough it means that you put everything into dark, environmentally controlled storage and never use it in any way. Of course this is not very socially responsible if you consider that museums are generally public institutions and the "public" has a right to access to the stuff. I've presented the quandry of preservation and the views of conservation in very black and white terms, but I hope it illustrates that collections concerns can be in some ways the very opposite of public programming interests. Jessie Johnson Texas Memorial Museum [log in to unmask]