Back from Break

Okay, so here we go! It's Museum Studies for the next few hours! Tuesday too many study abroad things came up, so this night I may try to catch up or maybe I will have to work some on Friday. We shall see how this reading goes... and if I can read fast maybe I can do some Dream Museum research as well.

#11 - Letter of 1863 to Mr. Thomas G. Gary by Louis Agassiz

Well, like the Peale article, this is merely an address.. quite literally since it is a letter. There is not a whole lot to glean from this letter, except to see that in museums where they have a specific focus, it is good to move progressively towards attaining new works. Also, extending your intended scheme of works is good, if you have grown enough: "...and now that it has become desirable to extend our scheme to objects which have thus far been neglected I make another appeal to you." This quote also illustrated the next thing I got from the letter, which is that just like in every other industry, it is important for museums to utilize their connections. This is true generally in the arts, but here it rings true as a general rule. Make friends, and keep them.

#21 - The Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford by James Fenton

Wow... this is a great work of poetry. Really evocative and imaginative, and not really informative but probably just included because it speaks of and describes a natural history museum. He makes it sound rather wonderful, and exciting, and dangerous even. I read it aloud, and the syntax is a work of art in itself. He speaks of the museum as a place for the imagination to roam free, "where myths go when they die." He talks of different types of museum visitors; the school groups, the students researching with their "soft electric hum," the lonely and unpopular, the solitary, the curious. He mentions the need to bring children to museums. He also speaks of a need to be careful, as if the museum were a piece of property with "men traps and spring guns set up on the premises." A place that is dangerous, but exciting. I'm not sure why he calls the museum dangerous. Perhaps it is the concept of the museum being a collections of memes and paradigms... which themselves can be parasitic in nature. I suppose there is danger of falling into a thinking that is not truly your own, but besides that I see no harm in seeing from other points of view. Overall, one of the most interesting things I have ever read with the subject being a museum.

Until tomorrow!