To paraphrase Will Rogers, I’ve never met a museum I didn’t like. Large or small, rich or poor, grand or narrow in scope, holding many or few collections, well or badly operated, easy or difficult to find, museums in my personal experience have largely been places of discovery, fascination, and enjoyment. On occasion they have been places of frustration, annoyance, and even anger. They have rarely been boring.

When people hear I am in the museum field they comment on how “interesting” the job must be. I could not agree more, but unless they have spent a lot of time employed in museums, few people actually know what they are about. I am still deciphering them while simultaneously never losing the opportunity to explain their value, though from a still‐evolving perspective. Perhaps that is the critical reason for my sense of daily engagement. If a person feeds on learning, wants to avoid mindless daily routine, can accommodate superfluous distractions, and has a capacity for ceaseless curiosity, museums can provide absorbing mental and emotional habitats.

I have had the adventure of pursuing a museum career almost all my life. My late parents enjoyed telling a story about me when I was five. We were leaving the great Spanish fort in St. Augustine, Florida during a vacation there. I said to them, “I would like to work in a place like this when I grow up.” My mother was an early childhood educator and my father was an interior designer. Both loved history and art. They were sympathetic to my career path and extremely supportive and proud of my work, as only doting parents can be.

In spite of my love for museums I continue to wonder why they exist, really. The question has become more acute of late. Museums fulfill no fundamentally requisite practical function such as hospitals, grocery stores, banks, farms, or schools do. When people put together their daily to‐do list, they are apt to include things like picking up dry cleaning, making a doctor’s appointment, mowing the lawn, or having the car washed. Going to a museum is not a common item. For most people, museum attendance is either entirely absent from their lives or rare.

In the grand scope of human existence, museums are late‐comers to the world scene – only a few hundred years old. Yet, they abound and seem to be growing in number, size, and repute. Why is this? I have intuitively and experientially concluded that there are several reasons. I reference these in the following pages, yet I have no comprehensive, encompassing, quantifiable, scientific, research‐based evidence of any magnitude to support my perspectives. To my knowledge such does not exist. I hereby put out a call to the psychology profession to find out why people give museums credence. What in the inner reaches of our psyches has caused these unique places to be?

Because mental inquiries tend to start with the self, I have begun asking my “self” why I find museums of value. I used to simply embrace them and proceed with appreciative glee. My financial reasons are obvious: I can make a living and get a pay check in a museum. But, I can do that elsewhere and probably for more money. Why did I chose to work in museums? What are the emotional, intellectual, and social reasons for my decision? As I understand those I will understand others’ reasons more acutely.

Only recently has it dawned on me that there might be developmental causes for my museum affliction. My grandparents on both sides, maternal and paternal, never threw anything out and lived in the same houses for a zillion years. They were neither collectors nor hoarders, just practical people who, for whatever reasons, found it easy to keep things even if not needed at the moment. Those moments stretched into years. I spent countless hours in attics, a barn, and a garage digging through boxes of family things of great curiosity and discovery. Fortunately my parents loved old stuff and interesting art. Because of my father’s work, our house was always beautifully decorated. We rarely bought new furniture as inherited things filled our rooms and striking fabrics left over from my father’s various decorating projects covered furniture and became draperies. Everything had a story. Living in a show‐and‐tell environment is exactly what making a living in museums is about.

In addition to loving parents, I have been extremely fortunate to have had a few mentors, especially early in my career. I’m not sure mentoring is as common these days as it once was, but it can be enormously helpful for newbies. As a kid planning to get into museum work, a close childhood friend of my father’s provided encouragement and even a few jobs when I got to college. Dr. Earle W. Newton had a peripatetic career as a museum director on the East Coast. He hired me during two college midwinter academic field periods and one summer break to help him at Florida museums he headed in those years. I got a lot of experience and, in retrospect, had more responsibility than might be expected. When I started as an entry‐level curatorial assistant in 1971 at the Museum of the City of New York I had two mentors, Joseph V. Noble, the director, and Albert K. “Barry” Baragwanath, senior curator. (The last name is Welsh.) They were generous, helpful, amusing, smart, savvy, and not afraid to instruct me regarding improved employment habits, such as getting to work on time. Paul Rivard was a management guru for me when he was director of the Maine State Museum and I was the assistant director. He was an ideal museum leader and probably the funniest person I have ever met. I occasionally refer to these men in this book.

I don’t know what the opposite of a mentor is, but I have reported to a couple of them. The time spent dealing with their stupidity was an excruciating “learning experience.” This phrase never connotes something pleasant, but I did learn how not to treat staff. I also learned that when it comes to bad museum directors you cannot expect swift corrective action from trustees. I learned that sociopaths in positions of museum power can be there for a very long time. I learned how to implement a philosophy I have abided by all my life. If I find a situation is untenable and feel I am wasting my time because of bad bosses (including trustees), I move on. I don’t refer to these men in this book but I owe them some level of appreciation. They all contributed to my deciding to be a director. In that capacity I am in charge, mostly, and I only have to report to trustees. What could be better than that …?

Finally, and most wonderfully, I have had the extraordinary great fortune to enjoy the love and support of my wife, Jane, and children, Andrew and Katherine. I am without question the most fortunate man alive in this regard. A heartwarming home has assured fun and balance in my personal and professional life. Love is what it’s all about. Thank you!

You can’t have too many museums.

The author

The Anatomy of a Museum offers my thoughts on why museums exist as they are now and how they accomplish their work. This is not an objective explanation of museums. My perspective is completely subjective and somewhat “old school.” I believe that museums exist to explain subjects through objects.

What I have written is based on more than four decades as a museum curator, director, consultant, writer, educator, and trustee. While that may sound boastful and suggests my observations are insightful and wise, I have learned over the years that in the museum field, every day is a new day. I have plenty of ego, but I will leave insight and wisdom to others. There are many who think they can provide that. Most either never worked in a museum or if they did it was not for long. Those actually on the job for any length of time reject self‐declared museological know‐it‐all‐ism.

Museums have never lost their fascination for me; in fact it has only grown. Museums are a blend of the philosophical and practical. They claim to exist for reasons that are quite lofty. Founding documents list highfalutin purposes, missions, goals, societal meanings, and essential proclaimed cultural contracts. The altruistic values are totally self‐assigned and we should all be grateful. Right? Maybe? Whatever.

Museums as we know them receive a lot of attention. I am not sure how much of it is deserved but I am very happy to have these places front and center when it comes to community conversations. This should cause those of us who work in museums or are otherwise affiliated with them in influential ways to gladly accept measurable responsibility and comprehend institutional inner functions for the outer, and we hope, greater, good.

This book discusses museums as if they hold certain common anatomical characteristics; its chapters are divided by components reflecting structural, operational, and philosophical aspects regularly encountered on the job. It is not comprehensive. Some topics, such as maintenance, can involve much more in the way of printed materials for references, codes, warrantees, operating manuals, etc. Other topics, such as exhibitions, are finally beginning to be well‐explained in lengthy publications devoted to that subject alone. Museum education seems to be awash with writings – but that is the talkative nature of educators. A few subjects, including directing and curating, woefully lack relevant and valued books about the responsibilities they involve.

In selecting and arranging my chapters I have attempted to establish an outline for how museum professionals as well as the general reader, especially those new to the field, might want to think about these oddball institutions. My friend Charles Clancy, a retired lawyer, helped keep me on track in this regard by providing superb editing.

Museums can be simple or complex and a varying combination thereof. If they are small, safely funded, and focus on a single subject, they might be simple. If they are large, financially robust, and cover lots of subjects, they can be complex. This book is especially mindful of my colleagues who work in smaller museums. They often have a harder time explaining, reflecting, and dealing with matters of professionalism on the job.

Museums are precarious inventions. I desperately want them to succeed, improve, and continue doing what they can do so well at their core. If this is to happen we must recognize that museums are experiments. Not a day goes by when something is not being tested in them or by people associated with them. The often meandering quality to their purpose allows for extraordinary latitude in what happens, how, and why.

As I have worked my way up “through the ranks,” my museum experience covers everything from painting gallery walls to designing gallery walls, from being an entry‐level staff member to managing large staffs, from following all sorts of directives to giving all sorts of directives, from reporting to trustees to being a trustee. (The only area I have not worked in is bookkeeping and accounting.) I have found my background to be enormously helpful on the job. Oddly enough, when I was preparing for my career, I actually got paid for what I did at various temporary part‐time museum jobs during high school and college. This is unusual in today’s era of unpaid internships. It reflects how fortunate I was, and I am most grateful for it.

In an age when museum workers tend to specialize from the start of their careers (e.g., educators, curators, administrators, fundraisers, and conservators) the kind of broad if occasionally quixotic involvement I have had with every aspect of museum operations and outcomes is increasingly rare. Indeed, it may be entirely outmoded. This reflects the professionalization of the field. I am not one to wax euphoric about the good old days in museums but there is something to be said for having a broad range of rank‐and‐file experiences. I have been fortunate to put my “hands‐on” labors in perspective on the job and in the classroom. Presumably it reassures staff with whom I interact, my students enjoy it (I hope), and trustees are appreciative (when they listen). It has certainly helped me be more aware of the many sides of a museum’s operations and activities.

In addition to drawing upon my employment background in museums, The Anatomy of a Museum is infused by my museum‐studies teaching. I have been an adjunct professor in museum programs at New York University, The New School for Social Research, Case Western Reserve University, and, for more than a decade, with the Seton Hall University MA Program in Museum Professions. A required class that I teach every year is entitled “The Anatomy of a Museum.” I thought it an ideal title for this book. The course presents an introduction to museums and is organized along the lines of this volume. As with my teaching, I try to balance ideal museum aspirations with real museum situations. The ideal is what we in the museum profession strive for. The real is where we land.

Class Questions

At the end of each chapter are some questions without answers. I use these in my teaching to encourage discussion. Everything described happened to me in my career or has been reported by reliable colleagues. The questions are suggested fodder for conversations, real‐life springboards for commentary and student and faculty response. I encourage participants to offer their own examples. The museum field is not static. It is a roiling world full of engagement with diverse attitudes, involvements, opinions, and actions. Some of my questions have obvious answers; others might be dealt with in more nuanced or contradictory ways.

Along the lines of my class questions, at the start of every class I ask students if anyone knows of a “museum issue in the news” we might want to discuss. The issues may be controversies, new ideas, interesting developments, whatever, and they can be drawn from hardcopy or on‐line sources. Museums are always in the news. Most of the time, it is problems that are discussed as they are much more revealing about how museums operate and exist in a public context.