Museums Matter

Cuno (former president & director, Art Inst. of Chicago; president & CEO, J. Paul Getty Trust) disagrees with critiques of encyclopedic museums as outdated "instruments of the state." Discounting the notion that museums manipulate visitors, he acknowledges that encounters with museum objects are mediated experiences. For Cuno, collections of objects from various times and places facilitate wandering and self-directed learning as well as cosmopolitanism and civic identity. He distills the many functions of a museum into a single task: to provide the possibility of connection between visitors and objects that represent the highest aspirations of world cultures. Drawing on writings by Edward Said and others on imperialism and globalized cultural heritage, Cuno argues that encyclopedic museums foster still-relevant Enlightenment ideals of rational inquiry and individualism—as opposed to fundamentalism and nationalism—by providing intellectual travel to unfamiliar and perhaps challenging places.