On Fri, 24 Jun 1994, Robert Guralnick responded to my comment: Overall, museums are highly respected as sources of information and enlightenment, but they are marginalized whenever questions of allocations of resources (time or money -- either personal, corporate orgovernmental) come into question. > Robert stated: I agree with this too, but I think it misses the point of Jim's comments. As I understood, Jim Swanson does NOT consider museums as being highly respected sources of information and enlightment (sic). THIS IS A CRUCIAL DISTINCTION and I dont want it lost in the shuffle. Jim's point is that museums are just another entity trying to convince the world that it has something worthwhile, or at best, a place to store old artifacts. I think this is a very negative and inaccurate description of museums. The question is not marginalization by outside influences but the value of museums in this world... > Although I too evaluate the tone of Swanson's communication to have been "negative," what I contend with here in your response is a continuing internalist-externalist dichotomy: museums vs "outside influences." Museums are in and of the world, they are socially constructed and socially-bound institutions, occupied by staffs and volunteers and members and donors and such, all of whom are continually behaving within cultural conventions and norms and social expectations and rules. Any such institution is always in the process of convincing others to approve its existence so that it can secure what it needs to "live well and prosper." In historical context, a postmodern world occupied by C-SPAN and MTV and timeless spaceless valueless events and commentary (this of course reads like an oxymoron), the notion of archiving of ideas, any ideas, seems fated to have little chance of creating or maintaining value.