Museums....What are they good for?

This week's readings have taken a bit of a shift in regards to their focus. All three of our readings focused on museums. The American Association of Museums annual report presented the current state of museums and its initiatives for moving the field forward. In Making Museums Matter, Stephen Weil takes a critical look at assessing the value of museums in America. In essence, he is trying to argue if an objective value can be placed on museums. He also seeks to explore how is it that some museums become valued more than others. Amy Tyson, pushes the conversation from the abstract into the actual. Her journal article, "Crafting Emotional Comfort" explores how two different living history museums address the issue of slavery in their past. Both sites choose to handle slavery in different ways. One addresses it head-on. They host a ninety-minute reenactment where patrons pay $16 to role-play the experience of being a fugitive slave in the early nineteenth-century. On the other hand, the second site chooses not to actively engage in the discussion of slavery. She brings the discussion back to of each site wanting to provide a comfortable experience for their patrons. She argues that since they are first concerned with comfort, they never truly achieve the experience they set-out to present.

The annual report had an immediate importance which i didn't find in the other readings. Though the piece was brief in its length, the section which discussed "communicating the value of museums" resonated most strongly. I believe this was most relevant because of the unique economic shape our country is in at the present. We find ourselves in a moment where cities are contemplating leveeing greater taxes on cultural institutions and in some places closure is a distinct possibility; a concerted effort by the greater governing association is a necessity.

There are sections of Weil and Tyson I believe weave together very well and they present us with a most important question. In Weil's first chapter, he explicitly states that a museum must clearly state their purpose for them to be truly effective. This ties into her discussion of Conner Praire (CP). CP chooses to wrestle with the issue of slavery but according to Tyson, they don't address it in a manner that facilitates a more true understanding of slavery. This is what leads back to the central issue of explicit definition of purpose. But, a second question to address is how to manage a true experience, wanting to keep interest high, without alienating patrons?

I think this raising an important issue. How can public institutions such as museums handle sensitive issues and give a true experience? I believe this puts museums into a tough situation but museums need to challenge themselves to give a true experience to their patrons. Regardless of how uncomfortable patrons might become, public perception of museums is a place of true information. If museums can stay true to this belief, they can make themselves matter.