> On the other hand, I can understand your frustration, because clearly
> the marketers, fundraisers, administrators, and even educators have been
> on the ascendant.  But the collections-oriented rationale for this is
> that the place has got to stay open and gather public support or the
> collections will be sitting quietly in a dark room with a leaky roof


Excuse me, but I thought we "museum professionals" were all working
together as a team to promote the importance of objects in their
appropriate contexts.  We all have specific interests and areas of
expertise--as a curator I am of course more involved in presenting an
object's  cultural value than its development potential, for
example--but I also understand that there are many, many issues at stake
for a museum and not all of them are pure of motive.  We must be content
to do our best job in our own areas, inform others of our own
perspectives, and hope that our top management will balance all issues
into policies that are always collections-safe, intellectually sound,
and visitor-encouraging.

However, as much of a purist as I tend to be about objects I also
realize that without people to care ABOUT the objects there is no reason
to care FOR the objects.  We are, after all, not working for ourselves
but for others.  This talk about "which is more important, the object or
the visitor" was settled about 10 years ago:  they are equally
important, cannot exist without each other, and both are our reasons for
being.


Julia Moore
Director of Exhibitions and Artist Services
Indianapolis Art Center