> My own feeling is that beyond being a rat's nest of artifacts, museums >are a sort of epiphemonenon, currently struggling to assert themselves >as having a key role to play in the world of ideas. Tsk tsk. How can you possibly degrade ANYTHING for seeking to assert itself as having a key role to play in the world of ideas. That, in itself, is a terrifically noble pursuit. However, more fundamentally, I think museums are themselves storehouses of ideas, not just artifacts. As such, they dont really need to ASSERT anything. Look, this post-modern flim flam forgets that museums are not JUST some "epiphemonenon" trying to set an agenda, but a physical reality that stores pieces of our history... these pieces being ideas, objects, representations. I REFUSE to believe that we can reduce the role of any institution in our society down to something as simple as the above passage suggests. Robert Guralnick | Museum of Paleontology | University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 | [log in to unmask] | (510) 642-9696