262 Quotes About Museums



  • Author Lonnie G. Bunch III
  • Quote

    Museums alone cannot ease the tensions that come from the debates surrounding the fluidity of national identity in the twenty-first century. Nor can any cultural institution solve the problems of poverty, racial injustice, and police violence. But museums can contribute to understanding by creating spaces where debates are spirited but reasoned. Where contemporary challenges are addressed through contextualization and education.

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  • Author Kathleen Jamie
  • Quote

    We know we are a species obsessed with itself and its own past and origins. We know we are capable of removing from the sanctuary of the earth shards and fragments, and gently placing them in museums. Great museums in great cities—the hallmarks of civilisation.

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  • Author Sharon Waxman
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    I used to wonder: Do only ignorant laypeople gaze on the colossal bust of Ramses II at the British Museum and ask themselves how it ended up there? Is it only the unschooled visitor who looks at the soaring column from the Temple of Artemis at the Met and questions why it exists in this place?

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  • Author Sharon Waxman
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    As once-colonized nations seek to stand on their own, the countries once denuded of their past seek to assert their independent identities through the objects that tie them to it. The demand for restitution is a way to reclaim history, to assert a moral imperative over those who were once overlords. Those countries still in the shadow of more powerful empires seek to claim the symbols of antiquity and colonialism to burnish their own national mythmaking.

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