Make no mistake, museums are political

In a tragic display of how charged certain kinds of museum subject matter are for some people, an 88-year-old white supremacist opened fire in the US Holocaust Museum in Washington today. Both he and the security guard he aimed at are in hospital with injuries. No visitors were hurt, and no artefacts were damaged.

It takes incidents like this to remind me that museology isn't just about "pushing dust around," as my mother says - museums are lightning rods for socio-cultural views. I'm just sad that instead of the Enlightenment dream of presenting and debating things reasonably and with evidence, this man decided to take the violent way.