Eric,
I usually like what you say, but not this time.  A good counterpoint is
to look at the Secretaryship of the Smithsonian.  Until recently, always
a scientist and always an administrator, and always successful.  Hard to
find anyone better than Dillon Ripley.  The kind of person you describe
sounds like a facilitator, a moderator, a mediator of interests and
issues.  Perhaps someone who, without any special skills of their own,
can package and sell those of others.  Today culture, tomorrow toothpaste.
Or Enola Gay.  Let's, instead, train museum people in the skills they
really need to do the jobs, not simply as connoisseurs but as connoisseurs
who can merchandise culture.  We speak of a "museum profession" but
unlike, say, medicine or law, we have no common training or ethic.  thus,
boards often have few qualms or feel little peril in putting the helm in
the hands of people who haven
't sailed a ship before, on the basis of the fact that they know how
ships are sailed or have heard how they are sailed.  Surely we can do
better than this.
Chuck Watkins
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