THE MUSEUMS OF THE FUTURE.' 



By George Brown Goode, 



Assistant Srcirtarw Sniit/iso)iian Institution, in cliari^c of tlie IL S. National 



Museum. 



There is an Oriental sajang that the distance between ear and e.yQ is 

 small, 1)ut the difference between hearing and seeing very great. 



More terse and not less forcible is our own proverb, "To see is to 

 know," which expresses a growing tendency in the human mind. 



In this busy, critical, and skeptical age each man is seeking to know 

 all things, and life is too short for many words. The eye is used more 

 and more, the ear less and less, and in the use of the eye, descriptive 

 writing is set aside for pictures, and pictures in their turn are replaced 

 by actual objects. In the schoolroom the diagram, the blackboard, and 

 the object lesson, unknown thirty years ago, are universally employed. 

 The public lecturer uses the stereopticon to reenforce his words, the 

 editor illustrates his journals and magazines with engravings a hundred- 

 fold more numerous and elaborate than his predecessor thought needful, 

 and the merchant and manufacturer recommend their wares by means of 

 vivid pictographs. The local fair of old has grown into the great expo- 

 sition, often international and always under some governmental patron- 

 age, and thousands of such have taken place within forty years, from 

 Japan to Tasmania, and from Norway to Brazil. 



Amid such tendencies, the museum, it would seem, should find con- 

 genial place, for it is the most powerful and useful auxiliary of all sys- 

 tems of teaching by means of object lessons. 



The work of organizing museums has not kept pace with the times. 

 The United States is far behind the spirit of its own people, and less 

 progressive than England, Germany, France, Italy, or Japan. We have, 

 it is true, two or three centers of great activity in museum work, but 

 there have been few new ones established within twenty years, and many 

 of the old ones are in a state of torpor. This can not long continue. 

 The museum of the past must be set aside, reconstructed, transformed 

 from a cemetery of bric-a-brac into a nursery of living thoughts. The 

 museum of the future must stand side by side with the library and the 



' A lecture delivered before the Brooklyn Institute, Febniary 28, 1889. 



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