The Future of Museums

I believe that today, one would be able to find a museum celebrating just about every facet of life. For instance, in the United States alone, there are the National Mustard Museum in Houston, Texas, the National Spam (the meat) Museum in Austin, Wisconsin, the Antique Vibrator Museum in San Francisco, California, and the International Crytozoology (think Bigfoot and Nessie) Museum in Portland, Maine. The number of museums and the footprint of these museums keeps expanding. What could possibly slow down the expansion of museums across the globe?

Global warming could just be the event that makes the museum unnecessary and irrelevant. In order to deal with the intense heat of the future, people will have to cram into smaller, artificial environments. Climate-controlled cities are likely a thing that will develop when walking outside will be too risky. There will not be enough space in these cities for everything, including human beings. Food will have to be grown inside the city's walls and domes. Enough apartment buildings will have to be created for the existing populace. Water treatment and sewage, electric power production, and other utilities will need to located within or very near the city. Clean mass transportation will also be needed if people must commute to work, school, or other venues within the city.

Not only will space be scarce for museums, but the reasons why we have museums (to remember the past and appreciate the arts) may not exist as well. In fact, museums may do more harm than good in future cities such as I've described. We will (hopefully) be placing diverse populations into these cities: people from all walks of life and of all races and ethnicity, not to mention religions and nations. It might be best not to recall how these diverse peoples were treated in the past. Talk about your melting pot, one future city would probably contain Muslims and Jews, Indigenous peoples, communists and capitalists, liberals and conservatives (but not likely cats and dogs to save food and space). It will be necessary for inhabitants to start anew, without hurtful reminders from the past.

But without history, people tend to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors, and without art, many folks will have little reason to survive. That's not to say that the arts cannot exist without museums, but they will have to compete with many other necessities to secure a spot in this new world. Future decisions regarding these important facets of our lives will be key, and will we even qualify as a civilization if we decide that art and history are no longer vital to our existence?