Is There a Future for Old-Fashioned Museums?

Showing Up Costs Money

Museums are relatively modern inventions.

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The human urge to collect magical, beautiful, exotic or merely curious objects goes back to the Stone Age, burial sites show. For most of history, however, these collections were the private preserves of the rich, powerful or learned. It wasn't until the start of the industrial age that the British Museum became the first created "for the general use and benefit of the public." Of the approximately 17,500 museums in the United States, more than 70 percent opened after 1950.

They are now entering another period of upheaval. The information age has ushered in an "economy of presence," says William J. Mitchell, former dean of architecture and planning at MIT, who has written three books on how the digital age is transforming everyday life and the built environment.

Showing up physically "consumes resources and costs money," he writes. "It costs us time and effort to get to places to meet people, conduct transactions and see performances."

We've welcomed the electronic alternatives. In eras past, for example, the only way to experience theater and music was live. Performers and audiences had to arrive at the same place at precisely the same time. Special buildings were created for such rendezvous. Now, however, the choices are endless -- broadcast, DVD, downloads, podcasts.

Print technology made bookstores and libraries ubiquitous. Now that the Internet's Amazon delivers, however, half of all U.S. independent bookstores have disappeared and the booksellers that thrive have morphed. They are now centered on their cafes, couches and cappuccino machines. They strive to become not simply warehouses but experience places.

This rapid transformation has had widespread effects.

While the markets for virtual experience grow exponentially, they also push extreme devotees in the opposite direction -- toward the authentic.

On any given weekend, tens of millions watch sports electronically from their couches. Yet 91,665 people pack FedEx Field because the communal experience is so intense.

The vast choices available on the Web punish places that try to be all things to all people. Wegmans and Whole Foods -- which present themselves as places for the cognoscenti to linger and savor the experience -- can take market share from places that try to appeal to the broad middle, such as Safeway and Giant.

The lesson for museums is that nimble upstarts can win big. Large, long-existing players complacent in their old formulas can die.

Truth and Museums

It's sometimes hard to know where museums are going for the murk surrounding where they've been.