Museums

Institutions organized to collect, conserve, analyze, study and document natural and human objects, processes, artifacts, structures, etc, are termed museums. Some museums are private with the owner being, in rare cases, the single visitor; others are public with millions of visitors. Collections may aim at comprehensiveness or exhaustion of a single object type or subject or may attempt a broad range of subjects with only characteristic selected objects collected or presented to illustrate this range. Museums, along with libraries, are the repositories of human culture and are indispensable for research and education. On the other hand they exemplify the acquisitional instincts of ownership and hoarding. Such cultural and esthetic avarice frequently leads to despoiling with power countries and minority ethnic groups being the victims. Also, particularly in wealthy countries large museums, along with wealthy private collectors, art gallery owners, and art auctioneers, constitute the economic powers that deny livelihoods to countless artists and prevent access to art by smaller museums by manipulating the prices of paintings and scultpture. This also encourages art forgery.