Are Museums Laughingstocks?

Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.

― Thoreau

A new study by the American Association for State and Local History suggests public interest in museums might have hit a brick wall.

Museum attendance declined 70% last year, the study finds. 

Casual observers blame the pandemic, of course; but museum executives are worried. Last year's falloff caps 40 years of decline. (Museum-going had already fallen by 50% between 1980 and 2020.)

The pandemic simply could be the proverbial "last nail" in the coffin.

Just ask any teen: museums are out of fashion, laughingstocks among the new generations. (I'm not sure Boomers and their parents cared for them all that much, either.)

Museum is a 17th-century word borrowed directly from the Latin for "library." Latin borrowed museum from the Greek mouseion, literally a "temple of the Muses."

The decline in museum attendance might signal that the Muses have abandoned us; that today's Americans are content to be a stupid and sluggish herd—a mediocracy.

Or it could mean museums are simply no match for amusements (a 15th-century word borrowed from the Greek amousos, meaning "Muse-less" or "uneducated").

That's more likely the case. 

In the words of media critic Neil Postman, we're "amusing ourselves to death."

Thank goodness at least some museum executives are responding to the crisis.

My wife and I recently visited The Concord Museum in Massachusetts, only two weeks after it had finished a $16 million renovation.

From beginning to end, the experience was a marvel—as engaging as any Disney destination, but with the content unsanitized (as it should be).

Brand-new galleries in the museum feature artifacts from the Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau; from hometown writer Louisa May Alcott; from local Abolitionists like Mary Brooks; from the African Americans who lived in Concord since its founding in 1635: and from the Nipmuc tribe that lived there long before.

Topping these rooms is the gallery devoted to the Battle of Concord, the dustup that ignited the American Revolution. In addition to militaria (including Paul Revere's lantern), it features a remarkable digital display—for narrative drive and subtle drama, far and away the best animation of its kind you'll ever see.

The Concord Museum's grip on innovation is firm, and, for that institution, could be the magic bullet needed to reverse audience decline.

But there's a roadblock to innovation like this: politics.

Politics—as they do many Americans—stymy museum executives, because politics dictate what gets displayed and what doesn't. They also define which museums get funding, and which are starved. Politics even define what a museum is—either a "permanent institution" (the right's definition) or a "democratizing space" (the left's).

Museum executive Thomas Hoving once said, "It's hard to be a revolutionary in the deadly museum business."

He's right. 

It might be asking too much of hidebound museum executives to become revolutionaries, although that is what they need to be, if museums aren't to remain laughingstocks forever.

Above: Thoreau's Desk at The Concord Museum.