There is a difference in attitude since museum educators are not living in fear that their expertise and skill set is becoming increasingly irrelevant as less people visit museums and funding is less available. That doesn’t make the visitors or the educators unintelligent, it just means that some people in museums have not caught on to the fact that the world has changed, and the museum field has to change with it. Of course, embracing change while spending most of your time preserving old objects could be seen as a bit of a contradiction.

Fortunately I work with curators who understand what educators do to connect our visitors with our exhibitions. Working in tandem we are reaching out to our visitors to improve their experience in the museum, and their understanding of our art. I think this is the case in a lot of museums, and I am excited by the efforts of many of my colleagues to update the museum experience.

This is nothing more than the White House bullying institutions into supporting their favorite programs. This is really offensive to me. Furthermore there is NOTHING in the Constitution which gives the Federal government the right to be involved in health, education welfare, museums and a whole host of things they are not getting involved in – I want my rights, and I don’t want to pay more taxes to support other people’s ideas of what they ought to get free.