REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I914 



II 



MISCELLANEOUS MUSEUM AFFAIRS 

 The functions of the State Museum and the codification of the 

 Museum law. It has been often pointed out in the reports of this 

 Department that the function of the Museum, as indicated by the 

 law establishing it as a department of the University, is very broad 

 in its character and provides for the existence at the center of 

 government of a great central museum which shall cover the entire 

 field of museum activities and service. It happens that the State 

 has not as yet developed any part of this central museum except the 

 museum of science. The efforts of the Director during a number of 

 years past to initiate a museum of history are a matter of record. 

 With equal force the law provides for a museum of art, of agricul- 

 ture and the industrial arts and of education. Furthermore, while 

 the essential organizing law of the museum is brief and very broad 

 in its scope, the definition of the educational functions of the State 

 Museum is somewhat extended as it now stands in the Education 

 Law. The Education Law defines the relations of the Museum to 

 a system of free public museums; it provides for and defines the 

 procedure in the establishment of a system of free public museums ; 

 it makes provisions for grants of money to such museums, subject 

 to the approval of the Legislature, and particularizes with great 

 defimteness the safe-guarding of the property of such museums. 

 Neither the State Museum nor its affiliation with free public 

 museums has been developed along the lines indicated by the out- 

 standing Education Law. This may be due to several considera- 

 tions, among them the fact that the Museum has but recently come 

 into visual evidence as a factor in the educational service, notwith- 

 standing its long history as a creator of new knowledge ; and the 

 further fact that this law relating to the scope and functions of the 

 .Museum respecting its affiliation with free and public museums 

 and with respect further to the organization and development of 

 such free museums has been hidden away in the statute book under 

 other designations. All the outstanding laws pertaining to the 

 functions of the institution have been assembled with a view to 

 their codification, and this body of law, which may be properly 

 termed the " Museum law," may well be formally incorporated as 

 a special chapter of the Education Law. There are certain out- 

 standing functions which the Museum actually performs but which 

 it does not execute as a department of the University, such as the 



