Hi all,
 
In a few months I'll be fifty years old, but I'm really the same
person as I was when I was a kid. I have more data now, and more
wisdom. I'm capable of more abstract thought. The jury is out as to
whether I'm smarter, but I'm the same "me".
 
Sometimes we forget this and think of kids as some other species. If
museum staff asked themselves "would I appreciate this sort of
treatment now? and the answer is "no", then the chances are that the
kids might not like it either.
 
It is a wonderful thing to have a muse, someone that can inspire you
to greater things. A building or a display doesn't make a great muse,
especially when it is a museum that believes that you should neither
touch nor own any of the things that are supposed to inspire us.
Humans are acquisitive creatures we really like to own stuff. Museums
used to understand this. When I was a kid in London, the uniformed
guards at the British Museum would get to know the young collectors
that would come looking for information. The keepers would often allow
the guards to give the young collectors the occasional duplicate -- a
small Roman bronze statuette, a coin, a scarab. If one of these young
collectors ever found a coin that the BM didn't have, they knew that a
keeper would swap it for something commoner, but of greater commercial
value -- a beautiful common Greek silver coin for a worn out, ugly,
but rare copper one.
 
Once there was a young man that showed an interest in the world of
nature, an older gentlemen, a geologist, took him under his wing and
showed him how to collect minerals. The young man eventually developed
his own interests, and managed to get a job collecting specimens on a
ship called the Beagle. Would Darwin have done this without that
mentor? It makes you wonder.
 
If museums encouraged collecting and ownership, all of our favorite
subjects would be guaranteed of survival -- there are more young
Darwins out there. Conchologists are a nice group of people why don't
we set a good example in our museums by giving away a few shells to
these future Darwins. The ownership factor will make a difference --
it did with me.
 
Regards,
 
John Hooker
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