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What's A Museum For?

New Zealand's museums are big business these days. They're a drawcard for overseas tourists and the local public alike. Tourists donate thousands of dollars and the annual report of any major museum shows that benefactors are generous. And it isn't just money either -- many people donate family heirlooms and material treasures.

Consequently, museums have bent over backwards lately to "reach out" to the community. Holiday programmes for children are arranged and Dunedin's Otago Museum and Auckland's MOTAT have their own version of "Discovery World" where children (and adults) can have hair-raising experiments with static electricity.

But at what cost? Not only the financial cost, but the cost to what a museum is meant to do. Is the effort being put into such out-reach programmes compromising the efforts of museums both at both pure research and in terms of traditional means of reaching the community?

Last year for instance, a South Island museum (pushed into a corner by a parsimonious government) considered cutting the role of two Education Extension officers, both of whom had been doing sterling work with schools and other museums. And what's to replace them -- another static-electricity generating machine? Could be.

After all, the Museum of New Zealand isn't placing its whale research rooms anywhere near where it should logically be (and that's in the museum) because the smells associated with rendering down the remains of beached whales might offend the visitors. But isn't that what science is all about? About rolling up one's sleeves and getting stuck in, bad smells and danger be damned? Must everything be "purified" and made palatable so people won't mind paying their entry fee?

Take one annual report issued lately from a large museum which, in page after page describing how it had reached out to the community, left itself with almost no room to describe scientific papers by staff; a number of scientists had their papers culled. What overseas institution is going to take such a museum seriously?

A parallel situation exists in one leading social history museum, which doesn't even have a rigorous research programme. It has a research department but it caters pretty much to family history only. And why? Because the museum is aware that genealogical material is the only sort of information for which the public is prepared to pay. No research for the sake of research is carried out, except for anecdotal snippets of information to accompany the latest, eye-catching display.

In the nineteenth-century, museums were static places, badly illuminated, filled with dead animals and and badly overcrowded exhibits. Now, the opposite effect is sought: exhibits, such as a Maori adze, are displayed alone so that, as one director put it, the item can "radiate its own excellence". Lighting has improved. Official openings are occasions at which one must be seen. But maybe, constrained budgets notwithstanding, maybe it's time museums stopped reaching out to the public so hard. Perhaps attraction, not promotion, is the key.

Instead of evaluating a museum's performance on its number of visitors (and on the number who pay) perhaps it's time that institutions attract visitors instead of promoting themselves. After all, Ron Walton had a programme on television, years ago, in which he carried out scientific experiments and Peter Read hosted The Night Sky. Quaint efforts by today's standards, but still great stuff and a generation of New Zealanders (myself included) remember their efforts with affection.

When I see the technical wizardry on Beyond 2000, I'm forced to agree that it's entertaining. It may even ignite my children's imagination. But devoid as it is of the Moby Dick smells mentioned above and without showing the pain and effort which is put into finding out about the discoveries, I am forced to ask myself -- is it science?

Mike Hamblyn is currently a library manager in Dunedin.