{"id":924,"date":"2006-08-01T09:02:45","date_gmt":"2006-08-01T16:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2006\/08\/what_makes_a_museum\/"},"modified":"2006-08-01T09:02:45","modified_gmt":"2006-08-01T16:02:45","slug":"what_makes_a_museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/what_makes_a_museum.php","title":{"rendered":"What makes a museum?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NPR had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=5563221\">a story last week<\/a> about museum collections on-line (both professional and avocational). Central to the story was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coudal.com\/moom.php\">MoOM<\/a>, the Museum of On-line Museums, which gathers links to favored sites (from  the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rijksmuseum.nl\/\">Rijksmuseum Amsterdam<\/a> to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whistlingrecords.com\/\">collection of whistling records<\/a>). The story explored whether <i>any<\/i> curated, on-line aggregation of content is worthy of the name &#8221;museum,&#8221; or whether there were other essential ingredients required to earn the term.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Merriam-Webster<i> provides two definitions for the word museum: &#8221;an institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value,&#8221; and &#8221;a place where objects are exhibited.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>[Jim] Coudal of MoOM likes the latter definition. &#8221;The choosing to display is what makes a museum, [and] the taste of the curator&#8221; he says. &#8221;The curation makes the museum.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Wilson O&#8217;Donnell, director of the museology program at the University of Washington in Seattle, supports the first definition, suggesting that scholarship, training, and academic rigor are essential elements of both being a curator and being a museum.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, unlike French, English doesn&#8217;t have an official language police to make a final determination on the term &#8221;museum.&#8221; But if I were a bricks-and-mortar museum director, faced with growing competition and confusion from collections on-line, I&#8217;d want to be as curious, clear, and concise as I could be about what made my organization particularly worthy of the word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NPR had a story last week about museum collections on-line (both professional and avocational). Central to the story was MoOM, the Museum of On-line Museums, which gathers links to favored sites (from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam to a collection of whistling records). The story explored whether any curated, on-line aggregation of content is worthy of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}