Research and exhibition in a museum

If you ask the layman: “What is a museum?”, he will answer. “A museum is a display of objects, that have an aesthetic value or scientific interest; the scope of a museum is to improve the taste of the visitor, is to give him, by visual means, aesthetic or intellectual enjoyment, to satisfy his curiosity, to show him the true and real things (a classic sculpture, an Indian weapon or a deepsea fish) instead of a documentary film, a radio report, or the descriptions and pictures in his books and magazines.” If an architect is in charge of designing a museum, he will see to it that the wallcases and the free-standing objects receive the right light and that the public and the conditioned air can circulate freely. He will design an entrance hall, an exhibition gallery, a director’s room, and, perhaps, in the basement or on the top-floor a store-room for articles not on display ¹).