This Stephen Weil passage brings out the contrarian in me... Besides being mushy on a scale right up there with Mark Helprin's speech for Dole; it not only doesn't reflect my 15 years of experience in the museum biz, it also is full of the "ain't we grand and morally superior" tone that affects me like eating a package of nutra-sweet(tm). If anything, museums' general low rate of pay adds an edge of embitterment to the employees. Only a few employees in any given museum are really "doing what they want to do," many of the professional staff are in some evolving state of their professional life, and are aiming higher. So the associate curator of decorative arts may be doing this because s/he loves it, but s/he sure would like: a) to be better paid; b) to chief curator (or both). And this does not even address the support staff, ranging from frustrated artists working as fundraisers, to non-union (for the most part) security and clerical staff. I've only worked in the for-profit world in menial temporary summer-type jobs, and have always made the non-profit world my professional focus. So, my basis for comparison is slim, but I could not generalize that people in the non-profit world are less embittered than those in the business world. Many in the latter get real kicks from their work. And if, in our eyes, their purpose is not so admirable as ours, that is certainly our own business. I suspect that if I were in the for-profit world, my reaction to Stephen's statement would be: "well, that holier-than-thou so and so, I go to museums, and listen to music, and raise a family, and participate in my community, and if he thinks that the museum world is such a noble and superior calling, he's welcome to it." (or words to that effect) I think its easy for us relatively poorer folks to feel morally superior to relatively richer folks. Again, that's fine (I indulge in it too), but I don't think that it makes for a compelling rationale for lousy pay and poor working conditions. Eric Siegel [log in to unmask]