Opinion: Despite federal budget cuts, museums are here to stay in America

In spite of the cuts to the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington,  museums and libraries across the the United States are forging ahead. 

For nearly three decades this little-known federal agency has provided tens of millions of dollars in funding and support to museums and libraries throughout San Diego. Jessica Hanson York, CEO of the Mingei Museum in Balboa Park, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the cuts are “a gut punch”

San Diego’s libraries and museums will survive — and hopefully prosper. But they will need our financial and moral support.

Such support  is crucial to building the kinds of communities San Diego needs, indeed which every community, every nation, badly needs;  and there has never been a more challenging period of economic dislocation facing the people in our community.

The Institute for Museums and library Services has said it best: 

“The relationship between libraries, museums, and their communities is at a critical intersection. There has never been a greater need for libraries and museums to work with other organizations in effectively serving our communities; there has never been a more rapid period of change affecting museums, libraries, and their communities.“

For too long, it seemed, people stopped going to museums, or at least museums didn’t seem to know who visited, from where they came or why they visited. That’s all changing.

If you’ve noticed, almost all museums now ask for your ZIP Code so they know where you came from, and with some precision — particularly with the help of the help of audio guides (often offered free) — they know what attracted you, and how long you spent at any one exhibit, just as online marketers have been doing with data cookies.

The Dallas Museum of Art sometime ago launched “free general admission and a no-cost friends membership” program, to encourage broader involvement and interest among people who might not otherwise go to museums at all. The plan is simple: give everybody a device that tells him or her what he or she is seeing and collect the data. When compared to their Zip Codes, the museum can tailor their experience, curate to reach a wider audience and better serve the larger region..

Modern tech is transforming museums from spaces of looking and learning to spaces of interaction, participation and engagement. Many libraries and museums in Southern California do the same.

But that is only the beginning of what museums are doing with technology to serve the larger community and relate to their community in ways unheard of in another age. Clearly museums are being redefined for a digital age. The transformation, museum officials say, promises to touch every aspect of what museums do, from how art and objects are presented and experienced to what is defined as a 

The pragmatic need to appeal to modern audiences, who expect to be surrounded by technology, is one engine of change. But museum officials insist there is a powerful aesthetic and cultural rationale as well. 

Recently, I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam where you can buy almost anything Van Gogh — candy, scarves, potato chips (must be a connection somewhere). There is a booth encouraging visitors to pose in front of a Van Gogh painting and receive an email picture, creating a deeper connection between the museum and the visitor.

As the British philosopher Alan Watts once put it, museums were once just “places where art goes to die.” But for most people now, museums are cherished institutions — places that “house artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural or historical importance and make them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary.”

John Eger is professor emeritus in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University. Previously, he served as legal assistant to FCC Chairman Dean Burch, telecommunications adviser to President Gerald R. Ford, and senior vice president of CBS Worldwide Enterprises.