The changing mission of museums

Abstract

This chapter discusses what the current missions or goals of anthropology and archaeology museums are today and, in the authors' experiences, how these goals have changed during their respective careers. The authors discuss in this organizational or funding obstacles that have emerged and that they have overcome, and especially the logistics and politics of work in this field. Nash discusses these issues in particular reference to the Field Museum, Chicago and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS); O'Malley in particular reference to the William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. The authors identify in closing three currently disparate entities toward a common goal for museum-based archaeology: (1) the public's inherent interest in our subject; (2) the often unseemly amounts of disposable income produced by Western-style capitalism; and (3) a preservation, conservation, and (most importantly) dissemination ethic amongst archaeologists such that museum archaeology again returns to a central position in the discipline and in society.