Rozan provides a seemingly optimistic argument about the future of museums. The concept of “museum” continues to thrive but the meaning of it changes from a “single-purpose organization” to a “hybrid institution” that serves important communal purposes and takes more social responsibilities. I think his theory is reasonable since museums are facing the problem of declining visitors, which indicates that the the importance of their original purpose of solely collecting and presenting is decreasing overtime. Museum does need to find new purposes in order to survive.

I feel somewhat skeptical about the idea of museum becoming a huge compound of civic institutions. But to what extent can we alter the essence of the concept “museum” before it actually changes into something else? It reminds me of some bookstores in the shopping center at my hometown that, in order to survive, they gradually replaced books sections with clothings, housewares, and coffee shop, to an extent that I questioned myself whether it can still be called a bookstore. And for visitors like me who is only attracted to the store because of its book, it seems to fail its original purpose.

Another interesting point that he mentioned was that museums will change from national and international to local and regional in terms of focus. I think smaller and more specific museums may transition quicker to serve more community based purposes, but I wonder how huge museums would react to this because it doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to shift focus to solely the community because their collections are still extremely valuable as world treasures.

One thing that intrigues me is that he mentioned the change of job for the current museum guards. I think it is a very interesting job because of their long time exposure to art and even some disrupting experimental art. This is off-topic but I wonder how these art influence them as individuals.