Lucas: Purposes and Aims of Modern Museums 121 



Now the idea that the museum is an important educational 

 factor in the community is comparatively new, and it is only 

 recently that steps have been taken to put this idea into execution. 

 The early museums were primarily for the student, secondarily 

 for the public, and when a century and a half ago the British 

 Museum was opened to the public, the attendance was limited to 

 thirty a day and admission was by ticket and carefully arranged 

 for in advance. Nowadays when the visitors at our larger 

 museums average from 500 to 1,000 or more a day, this strikes 

 us as amusing, but this was really the germ from which the 

 modern educational museum has developed. And if your at- 

 tendance should seem small in comparison with that of older 

 and richer museums, it may encourage you to recall that there 

 was a time when what is now the greatest museum in the world 

 had but 1,000 a year. 



We are so familiar with public museums that we are prone 

 to forget how very recent they really are and how their aims 

 and objects have changed even within the past twenty-five years. 

 The great Museum of Natural History impresses one as having 

 existed for long years and yet not only this, but every museum in 

 Manhattan has practically come into existence, certainly into 

 active being, in my own day. And yet while museums them- 

 selves are far from ancient the idea that they might be utilized on 

 a great scale for the benefit of the public at large is still more 

 recent. 



I hesitate to repeat what I have said so often of late that one 

 of the great differences between the old museum and the new 

 is that the one displayed objects while the other aims to illustrate 

 ideas. And yet this is one of the important characteristics of the 

 modern museum. The old museum was merely a storehouse 

 whence students drew the material for their work and into which 

 the public was permitted to gaze. The new museum seeks to 

 interest the visitor in the field of work, illustrates its methods and 

 purposes and displays some of the results. For example, in place 

 of an hundred birds intended only to show just so many species 



