With regard to this thread, which I find very interesting and well-considered, it is interesting to note developments in the American Museum of Natural History. As an interested outsider, I have watched who speaks for new exhibits recently implemented or in development. A paleontologist headed the exhibit team for the Fossil Vertebrate exhibits (dinosaurs and extinct mammal halls), or at least is publicly recognized and identified as the person responsible for the exhibit (though the exhibit designer Ralph Applebaum also has been very visible in this regard). An anthropologist (Ian Tattersal I think his name is) led the exhibit team for the Hall of Human Evolution. Niles Eldridge, the famous advocate of the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution (and I believe an invertebrate specialist ?), is leading the exhibition team for the biodiversity exhibit that will open over the next couple of years. This arrangement has had its pro's and con's. Witness the cladistics diagram layout of the fossil halls (does anyone but the curator get that?) However, curators leading exhibit teams is a separate question from the relative allocation of resources between collections management and preservation vs. public programs. This is a contested issue in any collecting museum. My only contribution to that is: if a museum successfully fulfills its public mission (education and exhibition, as well as a slew of other factors), then it is more likely to generate the revenue necessary for its other functions, such as collections management. This, I believe, is a core issue behind the disarray at the New York Historical Society, which entirely neglected its relationship to the public, and found itself without the bare minimum of funds necessary to preserve its collections. That seems to be the analysis of the problem being addressed by the current management, led by Betsy Gotbaum, who is working to regain public interest in the institution, and somewhat controversially, focusing its collections policy through deaccessioning. It is an illuminating contrast to compare the New York Historical Society with The Museum of The City of New York (sorry to be so parochial here, but these are the institutions that I know about...). The latter, with extraordinary and important collections in a building that has needed considerable capital investment, has worked to develop compelling public exhibitions. The interest generated by these exhibitions has made it possible to undertake the kind of capital program required to preserve the building and its collections. So, simply to assert the primacy of collections seems to me to avoid the reality of running a museum (as I see it from below), which is to make the institution compelling to a broad constituency of funders, community groups, special interest groups, visitors, and government officials (not necessarily in that order). This constituency will, in turn, help make it possible to preserve collections for later generations' enjoyment, edification, aesthetic charge, controversy, or utter neglect. Finally, once again, I would not worry too much about the historical role of museums as agents of cultural preservation. That is simply too new a role for these institutions, and if it changes, it will not be the end of civilization, but rather an adaptation of a 100-year old practice to new concerns. Eric Siegel [log in to unmask] The New York Botanical Garden and (newly) Chairman The Museums Council of New York City