2680 Journal of Applied Microscopy 



The Museum. 

 XIII. 



ADMINISTRATION. 



The question of administration in museums only approaches serious propor- 

 tions when the museum itself has important dimensions. The administration of 

 many local and small museums is necessarily simple. One curator may have 

 entire control of everything, and where on a slightly more extended scale the 

 museum staff exceeds one, or equals five, problems of installation, labels, inves- 

 tigation, accessories, etc., are readily determined by conference and mutual sug- 

 gestion. And yet even in so circumscribed an area of authority, autonomy is 

 desirable to a certain degree. 



It is evident at the outset that a museum has two aspects, its outer and inner. 

 Its relations to the public, its own trustees, members or patrons, the city or town 

 where it is placed, and from which it frequently draws a very substantial portion 

 of its maintenance, are its external aspect. Its particular theory and practice 

 within its own walls, and in the management, equipment, and schemes of exhibi- 

 tion in its separate departments, the purchase or exchange of specimens, duties 

 and functions of its curators, plans of research or exploration, are its internal 

 aspect. In any large museum therefore it is essential that the line of juncture 

 between these diverse attitudes be expressed in a director of such nature and 

 acquirements as to bring him in sympathy with scientific work, and also enable 

 him to meet the questions of administration, this latter office involving the esti- 

 mate of expenses, survey and criticism of building plans, and projects, regula- 

 tions and rules for the public, assistants, cleaners, guards, engineers, and means 

 and ways of enlarging the usefulness and popularity of the institution. The 

 director also acts as an interpreter of the needs and scientific methods of the 

 museum to the trustees and patrons. 



But with this said, the emphatic declaration remains that the curator in a 

 museum department should retain his autonomy, and the development and instal- 

 lation, the method and aims, the particular theories, and their exemplification, 

 of presentation and popular instruction involved in his arrangement and disposi- 

 tion of the material at his command should be unmolested. In this way indi- 

 viduality can be given to a department, and while of course the contrasted char- 

 acter of their contents gives each taxinomic section of a museum a real isolation 

 from the rest, the plans of labels, the scheme and order of the explanations, the 

 various designs used by a curator for embellishing a collection as well as of 

 making it a means of education to the public impart a special character quite 

 different from the character derived from the objects themselves. 



Perhaps complete laxity in the matter of supervision is to be deplored, but a 

 very free use of his own power of initiative should be conceded to a curator, and 

 its restriction only incurred when his methods appear extravagant or illusory or 

 childish. Incompetency can only be rectified by suspension. 



