Why museums matter

He likens museums to regions and nations in which all sorts of disparate elements are brought together, which in different ways express the past vividly embodied in the present.

The thrust of his ruminations on the nature of collections is that, like collections of people, the sum is greater than the parts because of the dialogues, conversations, connections and interactions between inanimate objects animated by both curators and public as well as people.

If this sounds twee, it is not, as his writing is spare, elegant and persuasive. And in small compass, the issues he raises are extraordinarily wide ranging. He suggests that museums—whatever their collections natural history, science, art, history , their size and however diverse—are in the same situation, balancing the needs of the collection and the public, staff and funding, the varied constituencies that make up both the museum and its place intellectually and geographically. This is all in the context of what is really an explosion not only in the expansion of museums worldwide but in the creation of new museums.

He cites a survey in the Economist: in the early s there were perhaps some 23, museums world wide, and now there are about 55, Moreover, this number is increasing, for example with China embarking on a huge and immediate expansion of numbers. At that point, I was challenged to articulate why museums matter. In presenting our collections, exhibitions, and programs we reaffirm what it means to be human, creating an enduring sense of understanding, appreciation and empathy in our communities for all those that participate.

Although I told the donor this reason, in many ways I reminded myself at an important moment in my career why we matter. Robert B. Pamplin Jr. From the Field. June 2, I am honored and humbled. Gauguin got to the heart of it: art seeks to provide answers to these essential questions: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

To wander and wonder is to activate a special kind of enlightened curiosity about the world, in which we see ourselves in the creations of someone else and come to know ourselves as part of a continuum of shared human identity. Museums are a means of dissipating ignorance and promoting tolerance. And people often ask me: if disaster struck, and you had to save one object, what would it be?

It would be the Lamassu—a towering, odd, enchanting hybrid species. Part bird, part lion, part bull, part bearded king, created 5, years ago by the ancient Assyrians. Lamassus were once as prevalent throughout the Middle East as representations of Christ would become throughout Western Europe 4, years later. They stood at the gateways of cities and temples in an empire that stretched from present day Egypt to Iran. They were believed to embody the power of the rulers they protected.

Lamassus were icons of a tremendously imaginative world; they drew their power by straddling that intriguing, liminal zone of sign and signified, animal and human, terrestrial and mythological, local and foreign. If the art of art history is the ability to use images to trace relationships between disparate cultures, to find connectivity and shared conversations across place and time, then the Lamassu is an exemplary place to start.

They were prevalent throughout the ancient world, appearing on coins and inscribed onto clay seals—the original email signature. The Lamassu appears not only in the art of ancient Babylon and Assyria but also in the arts of ancient Persia, Judea, we even see traces of it in depictions of the four Gospels in the early Christian period when the Tetramorph took on the wings of the eagle, body of the bull, and feet of the lion to depict the spread of Christianity.

By , the birth of archaeology led to a mass excavation of these monumental sculptures from the sands of Iraq, shipped overseas to the secular temples of new national museums in Berlin, London, Paris, New York and beyond. These images exemplify the continuum of a conversation we as a human race have shared across cultures and across time.