Aro-Mind

It was my pleasure to participate in the final plenary session today at the Museums Australasia conference, Aotea Centre, Auckland. Here are my points: Of all the things that can be said about the museum, the theme in my mind is the idea of the museum as   a story telling institution – it creates and presents stories.  We have to understand with great depth and clarity that the process for the creation of story and the story itself represents a series of decisions that we, as museum leaders, directly or indirectly make on the pathway toward mounting exhibitions and other encounter experiences audiences have with our collections. This decision making process is a multidimensional 'space' involving a range of sometimes conflicting issues, urgencies, concerns and opportunities . Understanding what those issues and opportunities are and more importantly how to negotiate and address them is critical to our success. Some of these conflicting priorities include: the balanc...

As a recent entrant to the world of museums, I was delighted to discover that the word ‘museum’ arises from the ancient Greek word Μουσεῖον which is interpreted by Wikipedia, at least, as ‘…a building set apart for study and the arts’. It goes further to say that a museum is ‘a place or temple dedicated to the Muses’( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum )  The artist in me delighted in this discovery and was prompted to look further into ‘the muses’: The Muses, the personification of knowledge and the arts, especially literature, dance and music, are the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory personified). Hesiod's account and description of the Muses was the one generally followed by the writers of antiquity. It was not until Roman times that the following functions were assigned to them, and even then there was some variation in both their names and their attributes: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (flutes and lyric poetry), Thalia (comedy and pastoral...