Mulvihill 1
Leanna Mulvihill
Ms. St. John
AP Language
12 December 2007
Synthesis Essay
Museums are institutions built to preserve the past, celebrate art and teach about
scientific phenomena. However, it is not just content that determines what a museum
adds to its collection. Financial considerations and what it means to the audience must
also be factored in.
While museums are rarely for-profit ventures and often struggle to keep
themselves a float financially. For instance, the Museum of Modern Art played to the
tastes of individual trustees that contributed to specific departments and suffered a deficit
of one million annually due to a lack of cohesive management. Had a centralized
approach been taken to the museum’s finances, this deficit could have been avoided by
selling off less important pieces to fund new acquisitions. (source A) Museums have also
funded themselves through museum stores that sell replicas of works inside. Though this
has been argued to be un-academic and bringing commercialism where it shouldn’t be,
this is preposterous. If selling replicas for their aesthetic value rather than their
intellectual significance can make a museum self-sufficient, by all means proceed.
Museums today are not meant to be elitist institutions and if you can get more people
interested in your exhibits with merchandise while making it possible for the museum to
continue its work; that is absolutely acceptable. As long as the academic value of the
works within the museum are not diluted this is extremely beneficial because a museum
Mulvihill 2
is meant to educate its visitors, not simply entertain them. Museums should fund
themselves without regard for prestige because they are absolutely useless academically
if they close. (source D)
The significance of the exhibits to the audience must also be taken into account.
The National Museum of the American Indian (source C) will clearly appeal to the
Native American population because it preserves their own culture and also to historians
and anthropologists studying American Indians. American history enthusiasts and school
groups will also be attracted to this museum for the American Indian influence on
America’s history as a whole. The new-ness of a lot of the information will make it
particularly attractive because American Indian history and culture have often been
neglected in American history. Williamsburg, a living museum, has been criticized as
being too “sanitized”, (source E) both literally and figuratively as it glosses over disease,
slavery and class conflict and is inauthentic-ly clean. Though not entirely historically
accurate, it does paint a rosy picture, and creates a lasting impression through personal
interactions between visitors and reenactors. This draws people in is appealing and surely
benefits the museum financially which makes sense for maintaining the museum.
However, Williamsburg will lose some of its academic audience with this approach.
Perhaps one portion of the exhibit showing the “nasty side of life” in Williamsburg would
be a compromise that satisfies both audiences.
Museum curators must consider their audience and the financial implications of
every decision they make. The audience will be a mixture of academic and casual visitors,
both of which must be kept happy for the museum to maintain its financial viability.