Emotions

Is it the job of a museum to try to inspire in its visitors particular emotions? I am talking about the step beyond "hey this whaling ship is awesome!" sort of thing.


"The USS Constitution Museum serves as the memory and educational voice of USS CONSTITUTION, by collecting, preserving, and interpreting the stories of "Old Ironsides" and the people associated with her. We seek to create a positive, memorable experience for both children and adults by inspiring within them a love for the freedom that CONSTITUTION symbolizes. We will share CONSTITUTION's contributions with a global audience, and we will strive to be the best museum possible based on scholarship and innovative ways of sharing CONSTITUTION's stories." (emphasis added)


This is, as you can probably tell, the mission statement of the USS Constitution museum. I talked a little bit about the museum a couple of posts ago, but in our follow-up seminar this was something that came up. Some of us were uncomfortable with the phrase I highlighted above, especially considering that the museum itself is a privately run institution. If the mission of the ship herself had included that phrase, we would have been a little more okay, because she is run by the Navy. Do not take this as a criticism of the museum itself or as my opinion of American freedom, it is not my intent to negatively portray either. I just am unsure how a museum goes about inspiring those particular feelings in a person. If I were British, and came to the museum, I believe I would have very different feelings about the meaning of the USS CONSTITUTION. 


I'm not sure if there is a right or a wrong answer here. A lot of museums will be spending this weekend celebrating the 4th, and I know that all three of "my" museums have special events planned. Those celebrations, in their essence, lift of the tenets of our American identity. So the Constitution Museum is not alone in celebrating freedom, but I am still not sure if that fits as the central mission of a museum.