I almost don't want to give this any more exposure, but it's relevant, so... Philosopher Alain de Boton, fresh from telling us what universities need to do to be more "useful" for society, has expanded this thinking to museums. Except, he seems to think that all museums show is art. Well, as me and Attic Alumna Amy found out on Friday at the Royal Academy, an art gallery is not a museum (their reason for not giving a Museums Association admission discount).

In other news, Liverpool has a new museum. In this era of museums closing (including here in Leicester - sure, we have the best museum studies department in the country, but we won't have any museums to speak of soon), it's nice to hear this.

Comments

ellie said…
de Botton seems completely myopic about what museums do, his arguments are completely and utterly uninterested in any other kind of museum and is fixated on art galleries. I've got a few big disagreements with de Botton's argument, but I think his assertion that "neutral, bland captions" should be replaced by "for example, 'look at this image and remember to be patient'" seems especially contradictory... And the line about "dead libraries for the creations of the past" was worded better by the futurists ninety years ago ("those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts").
Elee said…
I came to the conclusion that ADB has used up so much of his brain tweeting homilies that he has forgotten how to think.

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