From being about something to being for somebody: The ongoing transformation of the American museum

Daedalus

Volumn 128, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 229-258

  Weil, Stephen E ^a  

^a SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION   (United States)

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EID: 0346475615     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. Notwithstanding that museums throughout all of the Americas might appropriately be so designated, the phrases "American museum" and "American museums" as used in this essay are intended to refer solely to museums in the United States.
2. Barbara Franco is director of The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Her observation was made in conversation with the author, June 1998.
3. Barbara Y. Newsom and Adele Z. Silver, eds., The Art Museum as Educator: A Collection of Studies as Guides to Practice and Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 13.
4. Kenneth Hudson, "The Museum Refuses to Stand Still," Museum International 197 (1998): 43.
5. Walter W. Powell and Rebecca Friedkin, "Organizational Change in Nonprofit Organizations," in Walter W. Powell, ed., The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 181.
6. American Association of Museums, Museums for a New Century: A Report of the Commission on Museums for a New Century (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1984).
7. American Association of Museums, Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1992).
8. Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums (Ibid., 7.
9. American Association of Museums, Museum Accreditation: A Report to the Profession (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1970).
10. American Association of Museums, A Higher Standard: The Museum Accreditation Handbook (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1997).
11. American Association of Museums, America's Museums: The Belmont Report (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1968).
12. America's Museums: The Belmont Report (Ibid., 2.
13. From a presentation made during the Smithsonian Institution's 150th anniversary symposium, Washington, D.C., 5-7 September 1996. The full text appears in Museums for the New Millennium: A Symposium for the Museum Community (Washington, D.C.: Center for Museum Studies, Smithsonian Institution, and American Association of Museums, 1997).
14. The quoted passage is reprinted in Museums for the New Millennium: A Symposium for the Museum Community (Ibid., 107-108.
15. ICOM Statutes, sec. II, art. 3.
16. ICOM News 71 (September 1971): 47.
17. Taken from the May 1998 interim report to the American Association of Museums' Board of Directors and the International Council of Museums' Executive Committee on the summit meeting of the museums of the Americas on the theme "Museums and Sustainable Communities," San José, Costa Rica, 15-18 April 1998.
18. See, for example, Judge Richard A. Posner's observation in United Cancer Council vs. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 165 F3d 1173 (7th Cir 1999): "Charitable organizations are plagued by incentive problems. Nobody owns the rights to the profits and therefore no one has the spur to efficient performance that the lure of profits creates."
19. J. Gregory Dees's views can be found in two published Harvard Business School "notes": Social Enterprise: Private Initiatives for the Common Good, N9-395-116 (30 November 1994)
20. and Structuring Social-Purpose Ventures: From Philanthropy to Commerce, N9-396-343 (15 April 1996).
21. For a basic description of the United Way's approach, see Measuring Program Outcomes: A Practical Approach (Arlington, Va.: United Way of America, 1996).
22. Nancy R. Axlerod, the former president of the National Center for Nonprofit Boards, suggested that these negative descriptions of third-sector organizations were no less inappropriate than that offered by the father who, on being asked the gender of his three children, responded that "two were boys and one was not."
23. United Way, Measuring Program Outcomes: A Practical Approach, 2.
24. Stephen E. Weil, keynote address to the annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums, Rochester, N.Y., 13 November 1997.
25. Information about Gone to the Dogs and about the Nanaimo District Museum generally was kindly supplied by Debra Bodner, the museum's director/curator.
26. All figures are from the Data Report for the 1989 National Museum Survey, American Association of Museums, Washington, D.C., 1992.
27. In his 1826 will through which the Smithsonian Institution was ultimately to be established, Smithson specifically mandated that it be "... for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."
28. Arthur MacGregor, "The Cabinet of Curiosities in Seventeenth-Century Britain," in Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, eds., The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press and Oxford University Press, 1985), 147-158.
29. Germain Bazin, The Museum Age (New York: Universe Books, 1967), 242.
30. The writings of Dana (1856-1929) - beyond question this country's most original thinker about museums - have long been largely out of print. That situation should be remedied in October of 1999, when a generous selection of those writings is scheduled to be published jointly by the Newark Museum and the American Association of Museums. For a brief overview of his life, see the chapter "John Cotton Dana and The Newark Museum: The Museum of Community Service," in Edward P. Alexander, Museum Masters: Their Museums and their Influence (Nashville: The American Association for State and Local History, 1983).
31. A selected bibliography of Dana's museum-related writings was published in The Newark Museum Quarterly (Spring/Summer 1979): 58.
32. For a description of the ecomuseum movement, see Nancy J. Fuller, "The Museum as a Vehicle for Community Empowerment: The Ak-Chin Indian Community Ecomuseum Project," in Ivan Karp, Christine Mullin Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine, eds., Museums and Community: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 327-365.
33. Joanne Cleaver, Doing Children's Museums (Charlotte, Vt.: Williamson Publishing, 1992), 9.
34. For a brief history, see Andrea Hauenschild, "'Heimatmuseen' and New Museology," a paper delivered at the Third International Workshop on New Muscology, Toten, Norway, 14-19 September 1986.
35. Quoted in Alfredo Crus-Ramirez, "The Heimat Museum: A Perverted Forerunner," Museum 48 (1985): 242-244.
36. Kenneth Hudson, The Good Museums Guide: The Best Museums and Art Galleries in the British Isles (London: The Macmillan Press, 1980), 102-103.
37. John R. Kinard and Esther Nighbert, "The Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.," Museum XXIV (2) (1972): 203.
38. John R. Kinard and Esther Nighbert, "Museum Ibid., 105.
39. Zora Martin-Felton and Gail S. Lowe, A Different Drummer: John Kinard and the Anacostia Museum 1967-1989 (Washington, D.C.: The Anacostia Museum, 1993), 37.
40. Scott G. Eberle and G. Rollie Adams, "Making Room for Big Bird," History News 51 (4) (Autumn 1996): 23-26.
41. Robert D. Sullivan is the associate director for public programs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The quoted language comes from "The Object in Question: Museums Caught in the Net," an unpublished essay presented at the annual meeting of the Visitor Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 7 August 1998.
42. Letter to the author, 14 December 1997.
43. Peter Swords discusses this in "Form 990 as a Tool for Nonprofit Accountability," delivered at the "Governance of Nonprofit Organizations: Standards and Enforcement" conference, New York University School of Law, National Center on Philanthropy and the Law, 30-31 Octoher 1997.
44. For a report of one such experience together with an argument that such experiences should he given greater weight in visitor studies, see Anna M. Kindler, "Aesthetic Development and Learning in Art Museums: A Challenge to Enjoy," Journal of Museum Education 22 (2 and 3) (1998): 12-15.
45. I am grateful to Camilla Boodle, a London-based museum consultant, for her suggestion that visitors may find a museum rewarding without necessarily accepting its authority. Conversation with the author, August 1998.