@ Bob Barzan, I wasn’t aware of the Modesto Art Museum, but your approach and vision very much appeal to me. You may or may not know that the museum I’m working for does not (yet) have a building. Therefor we do focus on the things you mention the Modesto Art Museum does, amongst others. It’s interesting to learn from your experiences and best practices and I’ll be keeping a close watch on your activities.

Does the Modesto Art Museum do something more than the 3 things I mentioned, which you believe is part of museums in the future? I’m very curious to hear other thoughts on the subject.

The Modesto Art Museum in Modesto, California is very much involved in all three. First, we have never had a building, so we don’t have to leave one. We bring art into the community using all types of venues, public and private, indoors and outdoors to for our art events and exhibitions.

Second, we are deliberately blurring the lines between curator, artist, and viewers, inviting everyone into a creative dialogue. For example, at a recent mail art event, we encouraged and facilitated viewers creating their own piece of mail art in response to the mail art they saw on the wall and then sending it to the artist. In several cases, the artist responded by sending a personal piece of mail art to the viewer. Many of our events are participatory. Anyone can submit photos to our flickr site or art to various exhibits.

Third, we are actively engaged with the community. In the first place, we do no activity without community partners. Those could be schools, other museums, cafes, public or private organziations. Also, when deciding what to exhibit, we not only poll our community, we also look at community needs. Recently Modesto was ranked least livable city in the county. We asked ourselves what responsibility does a museum have in such a community and togther with several partners we came up with Building a Better Modesto, a program to explore the place of the visual arts in creating a more livable Modesto. In particular we will explore architecture, landscape, and urban design through exhibits, talks, tours, online resources, and movies.

Here’s a link to another article from AASLH’s History News publication (and I’ll find another and post or send your way). This is more on how to engage with audiences. http://aaslh.org/documents/GoldenAgeHNSummer07.pdf

And here’s a link to AASLH’s nascent online community based on the concept of Radical Trust and user-generated content http://aaslhcommunity.org/historynews/

I agree with you about the timeline of the purpose of museums. To add some context, I found that the earliest museums were more like today’s universities, with European museums originating as you said,

I concluded that American museums have an ultimate social responsibility from the very beginning of the republic. This is a thread that is woven from Charles Willson Peale, through the Victorians (the great museum builders), the Great Depression, and later into the social tumult of the 1960s.

By the 90s, it became de riguer museum practice in the States, although we’re all still grappling with exactly what community service/engagement and social responsibility looks and acts like. And while I argue it’s our historical mission in America, many fall way short.

Mind you, this is not an indictment on museum practice elsewhere, I simply didn’t do any research beyond what you have in your original post (and I’ve typed above) about European, or any other global institution. My only experience has been as a museum-goer in some other parts of the world.

One tract you might want to look up is Theodore Low’s /The Museum as a Social Instrument/ from the 40s.