Abstract
The public, as a homogeneous unit, does not exist; and it is a waste of time to look for it or to attempt to cater for its needs. For museums, as for libraries, concerts and airlines, there are many publics, each made up of individuals with roughly similar interests, abilities, backgrounds and temperaments. To meet the precise needs of every member of every group is clearly impossible, and if its task is seen in this way, no museum can possibly succeed. What is more reasonable is to try to identify a very few important reasons for visiting a museum and to do one’s best to make the arrangement of the museum satisfy these reasons.
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Notes
The experiment is described by R. van Luttervelt, Dutch Museums (1960) p. 62.
There are some interesting and surprisingly early thoughts about this in Laurence Vail Coleman, The Museum in America, vol. 1 (1939) p. 38.
A. E. Parr, ‘Problems of Museum Architecture’, Curator, vol. 4 no. 4 (1961) p. 307.
David B. Little, ‘The Misguided Mission: a Disenchanted View of Art Museums Today’, Curator, vol. 10 no. 3 (1967) pp. 221–2.
Paul Marshall Rea, The Museum and the Community (1932) pp. 61–2.
Dillon Ripley, The Sacred Grove (1969) pp. 107–8.
Charles J. Cornish, Sir William Henry Flower: a Personal Memoir (1904) p. 75.
Niels von Holst, Creators, Collectors and Connoisseurs (1967) p. 294.
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© 1975 Kenneth Hudson
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Hudson, K. (1975). Arrangement and Communication. In: A Social History of Museums. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01757-7_5
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