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AT THE END OF WORLD WAR II, the American museum'notwithstanding the ringing educational rhetoric with which it was originally established and occasionally maintained-had become primarily engaged in what my Washington colleague Barbara Franco once called the "salvage and warehouse business."2 It took as its basic tasks to gather, preserve, and study the record of human and natural history. To the extent that some further benefit might be generated by providing the public with physical and intellectual access to the collections and information thus accumulated, that was simply a plus.
Fifty years later, caught up in the confluence of two powerful currents-one flowing throughout the worldwide museum community, the other specific to the United States-the American museum is being substantially reshaped. In place of an establishment-like institution focused primarily inward on the growth, care, and study of its collection, what is emerging instead is a more entrepreneurial institution that-if my own vision of its ultimate form should prove correct-will have shifted its principal focus outward to concentrate on providing a variety of primarily educational services to the public, and will measure its success in that effort by the overarching criterion of whether it is actually able to provide those services in a demonstrably effective way.
This prognostication makes no distinction between museums and museum-like institutions in terms of their funding sources, scale, or discipline. It applies equally to a large statewide historical society, a campus-based natural history museum, and a small private art gallery. The situation of the so-called private museum requires particular mention. Even the most ostensibly private of American museums-through the combined effects of its own tax exemption and the charitable contribution deductions claimed by its donors-receives a substantial measure of public support. Given the nature of that support, such private museums must inevitably be expected not only to provide a level of public service comparable to that required of so-called public institutions but also to maintain the standards of accountability and transparency appropriate to such public institutions.
Among workers in the field, the response to this ongoing change in the museum's focus has been mixed. Some number-- a minority, certainly-view it with distress. They argue that the museum-if not at the height of its salvage and warehouse days, then not long thereafter-was already...