II.— RECENT ADVANCES IN MUSEUM METHOD. 



The importauce of the Museuui as an a<;eiicy for the education of the 

 young and for the culture and euligliteunient of the public in general 

 is each year becoming better uuderstood. 



The control of all museums is passing out of the hands of mere care- 

 takers, or showmen, and is being assumed by men of intelligence and 

 enterprise, whose purpose it is to elevate this agency of public culture 

 to a plane of higher usefulness. 



Museum-practice has become to such an extent an art that some 

 years of training and experience in a well-organized general museum 

 are almost essential. Intelligence, a liberal education, administrative 

 ability, enthusiasm, and that special endowment which may be called 

 "the museum sense'' are simply prerequisite qualifications. 



Any museum which employs an untrained curator must expect to pay 

 the cost of his education in delays, experimental failures, and waste 

 of material. 



A museum without intelligent, progressive, and well-trained cura- 

 tors is as ineffective as a school without teachers, a library without 

 a librarian, or a learned society without a working membershii) of 

 learned men. 



Such facts as these are gradually becoming impressed upon the pub- 

 lic mind,_ and although the community within which a given museum is 

 located may not for a time concern itself actively about its shortcom- 

 ings, all the good work which it does is at once appreciated, and if 

 advances are in i^rogress, their results are eagerly awaited. 



The "Museums Association," recently organized in England, is doing 

 excellent work in that country. Such an organization is perhaps not 

 yet necessary in the United States, where local museums are so few, 

 but in time one Avill doubtless be organized. In the meantime the 

 American Society of Naturalists is so situated that it can perform a 

 l)art of the work proper to such an organization. 



Sir W. H. Flower, the sui)erintendent of the British Museum of Nat- 

 ural History, in his address at the last meeting of the "Museums Asso- 

 ciation" remarked: 



Of the museums of the Uuitcd States of America much luay l)e('xpected, TJieyare 

 starting ui) iu all directions, untramelled by the restrictions and traditions which 

 envelope so many of our old institutions at home, and many admirable essays on 

 museum -work have reached us from the other side of the Atlantic, from which it 

 appears that the new idea has taken firm root there." 



* Report of the Museums Association, fourth general meeting, 1893, p. 42. 



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