Museums and Objects

"A museum is the best device our culture has developed for the transmission of ideas to large numbers of people through the exhibition of genuine objects. This is the museum's strength. This is what it can do better than any other kind of institution yet devised...like other kinds of institiutions, the museum has both strengths and weaknesses; if it abandons its strong ability to exhibit genuine objects and moves toward the province of some other sort of institution, its success in transmitting its ideas inexorable decreases...Failure threatens an exhibition with long labels simply because a museum is not the right device for transmission of the written word. A museum is not a book" (quoted by B. Sweeny).