The different perspectives in Reinventing the Museum provided useful insight into the different issues and concerns museum workers face today. While I have very limited experience within this museum world, I still found myself nodding along with their worries. Museums issues often take the form of a clash between old world and new world ideas. While wanting to update a 60 year old museum you are faced with lifetime patrons that will literally boycott the museum should they find their old saddle is no longer on display. On the other side how does a museum honor its own institutional values and keep up with the modern world at the same time. The authors all seemed to agree that bridging the gap between the old and the new does not have one clear answer. In this struggle, however, I think museums honor their original value. By even making an attempt to honor their original purpose while remaining relevant they do their community justice. Not all attempts are successful, the discourse between these authors and different museums bodes well for the future.
Graham Black’s short discussion on sharing authority raises the largest issue I saw while working with my museum. I often personally witnessed this “… fear of their expertise not being recognized and of losing control,” (274) and more likely than not it harmed the progress of the museum. Distrust of other institutions and extreme competitiveness did nothing but harm the different museums in my city. Black focused more on the sharing between users and communities rather than institutions, and I feel like he missed part of his argument in that. I never witnessed a fear of the public gaining too much power but often witnessed almost paranoia towards those darned heritage centers and art museums. I feel like Black and the other authors should have touched on this harmful prejudice between museums as much as a need to share authority with the community.