Published: August 18, 2007 07:04 pm         

More museums

What has a museum ever done to you, Mr. Geiser? Museums are our country’s cultural repositories. They are education institutions with the power to inspire, inform and enrich us, intensifying the experience of being alive. Good museums are always searching for new ways to be relevant. The opinion that museums serve a limited segment of the population or are stagnant and old is simply, for the most part, not true. Not all museums are good, but most dedicated museum professionals are invested in a future for their institutions filled with increasing vitality and public accessibility.

I work at the Pawnee Bill Ranch, in Pawnee. Our July attendance was the highest it had been in 10 years. In June, visitors from 24 countries and 36 states visited our facility. More schools are booking field trips, and no, the kids are not at gunpoint. Judging from their faces as they see a “real cowboy,” play a game in a log cabin, walk the halls of a 100-year-old home, and tour the buffalo pasture, they are having the time of their lives.

We are in the business of creating memories that last a lifetime, in changing people’s perception of history as boring, and in making history relevant. So, Mr. Geiser, you are wrong. People do go “to those things.” I say bring on the Children’s Museum. We cannot have too many dynamic, quality institutions dedicated to promoting learning as a life-long adventure!

Erin Brown

Pawnee

     

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.