The discussion on the importance of museums is delightful to watch. Discussion from both sides of the argument illustrate current thinking in many museums. Directors and boards often have the least idea of what the purpose of the museum is and see it as a place to gather money through the entertainment quality of exhibiting the odd or unusual. Prestige and influence can be exchanged while everyone marvels at the unexpected. P.T. Barnum's dreams realized as high society interaction. Many curators see themselves as trying to further the academe by providing authentication, documentation and research material. Professors at universities come to the museum for authentication of objects and research needs. The museum directors and boards trade off this aspect of prestigious social validation and wish for their curators to be Ph.D's and to publish. University museums are quite different from private or semiprivate institutions. It is regretful to see reference to a "bad attitude" as that is an undefinable quality that is used to denigrate teenagers, women, minorities or employees who want a raise or better work conditions. The muse should still be in the muse-eum so that we can commune with the spirits of creativity inherent within the artifacts. Museum's are at once the noblest and most banal of institutions. Disney will further degrade the concept as most directors and boards shake in their boots, salivating for the financial resources represented by the Mouse. Curators will complain while submitting to their quaking fears of losing an academic, prestigious job during a tough economic time and watch the profession continue its ten year downhill slide. Posers from education departments will continue to undermine curators as they join with administration to sidetrack exhibitions into lesser intellectual feats while the new Directors of Programs usurp the entire institution. From Denver to Washington to Los Angeles these patterns are established. You need only fill in the names and you can easily describe a dozen institutions. Museum professionals would do well to review the destruction of the museum during the past ten years. Museums, like libraries, are best as timeless, classless institutions that can allow the populace to approach the resources they hold and make up their own minds and develop their own creativity. Like libraries, museums are elitist by nature, holding the oldest, rarest, etc. but they can also make the best available to the least among us like a book in the hands of a child. Paul Apodaca