NYTimes Special Museums Section

Is it odd that at the sight of the recent New York Times special Museums section I started to salivate like one of Pavlov's dogs? If I had a tail, it would have been wagging uncontrollably. No chew toy, frisbee or treat could have distracted me.

The section included articles about museum expansion, curating, and new and innovative trends, but one article in particular stood out to me as especially relevant to this blog in its first week: Julia M. Klein's "Oldfangled Interaction Gains Steam". The article discusses the new ways museums are finding to spur interaction and dialogue among visitors, from online exhibitions and to discussion sections incorporated into exhibitions. Shaping Spaces, Making Meaning does this through the various interactive sections of the exhibit and (hopefully!) through this blog.

But what this article really speaks to is what the exhibition designer for the upcoming Newseum museum, Ralph Appelbaum, is quoted as saying, that, "Museums are now starting to find a real role for themselves in encouraging social dialogue."

Perhaps what I love most about historical museums is their ability to make the past part of the present, to make it relevant to contemporary issues, to "encourage social dialogue." Its really a romantic notion isn't it? The museum as both the gatekeeper of cultural patrimony and the inspiration for discussion and change?

Now that's something to wag a tail over.