Thursday, January 29, 2009

Museums and Missions in Academia

From today’s Inside Higher Ed, “Museums and Academic Values”:

a museum may be vulnerable financially whenever its supporters’ sense of its mission differs from that of the leaders of the university. … At Brandeis, everyone at the art museum and many others saw its role as a key part of the liberal arts environment. At Penn’s museum, the scholars whose positions have been cut saw their wide ranging studies as essential to the university’s research mission.