David's point is well taken, i.e., that all change is not necessarily
merited.

However, sometimes change for change's sake is seen as valuable,
particularly when it may be beneficial to start putting a particular museum
in a different light to help attract the resources to survive.   Good,
indeed excellent, professionals are often the victims of this approach to
institutional survival.

Corporations and governmental bodies often change top-level,
high-performing career executives simply to try to assure shareholders and
politicans that "new blood" is being pumped in to see if the organizations
can perform better and/or solve one problem or another.  That trend may
have begun at the universities, where presidents (and their key staff)
turned over regularly during the 1970s and 1980s.

And unfortunately all of the non-profits, including museums, are now caught
up in that kind of thinking.

Ross Weeks