Annual Reports 135 



Report on Conference of Museum Instructors 



Dr. Arthur Hollick, Director, 

 Public Museum, 



Staten Island Association of Arts and Sciences. 



Sir: In addition to the annual report of work accomplished during 191S, 

 I wish to submit the following report of the conference of museum in- 

 structors which was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 7 

 and 8, 1915, and which I had the honor to attend as a delegate from this 

 museum. 



The idea of such a conference originated with, and the call for delegates 

 was issued by, Mr. Henry W. Kent, secretary of the MetropoHtan Museum, 

 who believes that with the growth and development of museum work with 

 the school children comes the necessity for a better coordination of this 

 work with the work of the schools, and that the line where museum and 

 school is to meet can best be found through a full, frank and open dis- 

 cussion of the question by the teacher and the museum docent, instructor, 

 or whatever name the individual museum chooses to call the member or 

 members of its stafif who are considering this vital question. 



Delegates were present from as far west as Chicago, and as far east as 

 Boston, and all the museums in Greater New York or its vicinity were rep- 

 resented by one or more persons. 



Dr. Edward Robinson, Director of the Metropolitan Museum, gave the 

 address of welcome on Friday morning, and was followed by Professor A. 

 V. V. Brown, of Wellesley, who gave a thoughtful presentation of the rela- 

 tion of the museum to the college, ending with the hope that colleges and 

 museums would, in the future, plan certain courses together, with advan- 

 tage to each institution. College credits could be given for work done 

 by students at the museum, and the museum would, in its turn, be the 

 gainer by the possibilities thus opened of obtaining trained workers for its 

 staff — the trained museum worker being at present an almost unknown 

 quantity, unless he or she is taken away from some other museum. 



A discussion on publicity methods for museums, taken part in by Dr, 

 John Cotton Dana, of the Newark Public Museum and Library; Miss Delia 

 I. Griffin, of the Children's Museum of Boston ; and Mrs. Vaughan, of the 

 Metropolitan Museum staff, brought out the opinion that newspapers were 

 better publicity agencies than printed matter distributed through the mails 

 to individuals, and that at least a part of the time of some one person in 

 each museum should be devoted to publicity work. To give a free quotation 

 from one of the speakers — " Trustees and curators should remember that 

 their duty is not alone to gather collections and house them, but to ' get 

 them across,' as the stage phrase goes, to the pubUc. They are the custo- 

 dians for the people of the artistic and scientific material gathered under 

 the roofs of the museums, and they should do everything in their power 

 to bring the knowledge of these collections before the public." 



