What is a museum

The article describes the different definitions and the evolving function of “the museum”, as well as the contribution of museums to culture and public education; however, one glaring neglection of the article is its failure to address the negative impacts of museums. The article mentions that “a commitment to community or social welfare have grown to be important aims for the museum in the last century”, but this brings attention to the limited definition of “social welfare”. The “social welfare” in this context only considers the welfare of the society the museum itself is in, as opposed to considering it from a broader viewpoint of humanity as a whole. The article does not acknowledge the type of cultural discontinuity as the result of objects being taken away from the countries and cultures which they originally belong to. The loss of artifacts and the resulting loss of identity can be damaging for a culture, and these culture are generally excluded from the mainstream discourse when we are considering “social welfare”. In the post colonial 21st century, one important question we should be asking ourselves is how to build museums ethically such that it does not built itself upon the exploitation of other cultures.

How Will Covid 19 Change the Way Museums Are Built?

This article describes some of the architectural and interior design decisions to be made to museums to minimize the chances of spreading diseases. One of the negative impacts of this might be that it makes museums more alienating and impersonal than they already are: a space with a more intimate feeling might be more attractive to the visitors. One examples the article mentions is a drive through Van Gogh exhibit of projections of paintings on walls, which honestly just feels like a consumerist farce.

Why Museums Weathered the Pandemic Better Than Most — and Where They’re Headed Next

I thought this article would be talking about how museums fare better in the pandemic financially because they aren’t designed to be profitable institutions who rely on traffic for survival, but instead it mostly focuses on how the consumers are more comfortable with going back to museums. It would be interesting to see an article describing the financial structure of museums and why it is valuable for museums to stay as funded, nonprofit institutions.