
Museums and their Public
What do museums owe the public? And what should the public give museums? These questions have been on my mind recently, as I’ve been completing an internship at Cambridge’s Whipple Museum of the History of Science. The Whipple is part of Cambridge University and has an ambiguous relationship with the public. It is open to all, and entrance is free. But the founding charter of the Museum emphasizes its importance as “a teaching instrument and an accessory to modern researc