I was recently having a very pleasant conversation with a museum volunteer, until she said something that stunned me. She claimed that if we (Americans) stop funding our museums, we will lose our culture and become a third world country.
Here are the things I feel are wrong with that statement.
1. The volunteer's statement completely misunderstands what it means to be a
third world country. That designation has nothing to do with how many museums a country has. Plenty of third world countries have museums, though their quality and standards vary wildly.
2. The statement assumes that museums are the sole creators of
culture. Anyone who has ever thought seriously about "culture" simply cannot come to that conclusion. Museums may be the
guardians of culture, but their existence has nothing to do with whether or not a society has "culture."
3. The statement limits "culture" specifically to fine art, and more broadly to anything contained within a museum. But the arms of culture reach far beyond the kinds of things that museums house. It includes the songs you sing, the stories you tell your grandchildren, the clothes you wear, the books you read, the food you eat, the words you speak, and every little piece of ephemera that hardly anyone thinks of saving.
4. The statement assumes that museums cannot exist without some kind of government funding and, by extension, that those museums are superior to those that do not receive government funding. Can government funding improve the quality of museums? Absolutely. One need look no further than the London's
National Gallery or the
V&A to understand that government money can not only help improve the content of museums, but also make those museums free and accessible to all. But one can also look at the U.S.
Park Service, with its years-long backlog of maintenance requests and its continual budget deficits to see the problems associated with government funding. I am in no way advocating that the government stop funding museums; many small museums and historic societies could not exist without the funding they receive from the state or federal government. I am merely pointing out that the end of government funding would certainly not mean that all museums or all culture would be permanently wiped out of the American landscape.
To be fair, I am probably reading into the woman's statement. But I do believe that her comments are indicative of many individuals who work or volunteer at art museums. "Culture", for them, begins and ends with fine art, an idea which is not only erroneous but dangerous.
