From the website: "What are Museums for?" was the question set by the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust Award in 2005. The winner of the annual essay prize established in honour of the former Editor of The Times who died in 1985 is James Delingpole, a novelist, freelance journalist and regular contributor to this paper.
The conclusion:
From the website: What I realise now, though, is that the problem isn't the many different answers the museums industry is finding to answer this question. The problem is the question itself. To ask it is already to presuppose that a museum can only justify its existence in some form of utilitarian value; it implies that culture can be measured; that a museum can be submitted to cost benefit analysis; that it ought to be micromanaged by the state if, according to the political precepts of the moment, it is found wanting. But museums are above all this nonsense. At least they should be.
