This is a topic that I absolutely love, and I will soon start a new series on the history of museums, reviews of types of museums, and definitions of what a museum is.
Dr. Connolly’s blog, and the questions he asks there, goes back to my beginnings as a museum practices student in the fall of 2008, when I took his class at the start of my MA Program at the University of Memphis.
Check this blog out, and feel free to share your thoughts on it in the comments section.
The International Council of Museums defines a museum as “a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.”
Though the ICOM definition still works, for the most part, today the very concept of a Museum is being pushed, pulled, and repackaged. For example, the Museum Association blog published an interesting piece on the impact of the Google Art Project on the study of artworks. The article considers how folks studied a work of art in the past and today. Not having the books in the distant past meant the only means for studying a work of art was to go to a museum. Five years ago in my Museum Practices graduate seminar I recall the literal gasps at my suggestion of…
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Katie Stringer Clary, PhD 