The Real Fight for the Smithsonian

""The object of the Museum is to acquire power," announces a crusty old archaeologist in Penelope Fitzgerald's 1977 satire, The Golden Child. It isn't a goal he respects. He wants the museum where he's settled into semiretirement to genuinely devote itself to educating its visitors. Instead, he correctly charges, its curators act like a pack of Gollums, hoarding "the art and treasures of the earth" for their own self-aggrandizement and pleasure."

"But the Smithsonian has long sought a higher mission than national storage. George Brown Goode, who ran the Smithsonian in the late 19th century and set its intellectual course, swore that it would be not a "cemetery of bric-a-brac" but a "nursery of living thoughts." He wanted it to consist of "museums of record"-cultural institutions that tell canonical stories about the history of the nation-and today, it does. Its museums do far more than any privately funded ones to shape and crystallize our country's narrative."

A crusty archaeologist declares that the object of museums is to acquire power and criticizes curators for hoarding art for self-aggrandizement rather than educating visitors. An unnamed massive state-run museum in London is presented and implicitly identified as the British Museum; a U.S. counterpart would be the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian has long sought a mission beyond national storage, championed by George Brown Goode, who insisted it be not a "cemetery of bric-a-brac" but a "nursery of living thoughts" and a constellation of "museums of record." The Smithsonian's museums significantly shape and crystallize the nation's narrative. Laura Schiavo emphasizes an obligation to the objects the institution owns.

Read at The Atlantic