Text 1: Please do touch, by Lena Shah

An original contemporary magazine column.

I used to know what a museum was for. It was a place where voices dropped to whispers and even your shoes seemed to behave better. Inside a glass case, an ordinary object became important simply because nobody was allowed to touch it. I liked that seriousness. When our town museum closed for refurbishment, I worried that it would return full of flashing screens and buttons designed to rescue visitors from the terrible danger of having to look at something.

On its first Saturday open, I took my nine-year-old niece, Amina. Above the entrance, enormous letters announced, “HISTORY IS YOURS. MAKE SOME NOISE.” Amina approved. I wondered whether the museum had been crossed with an indoor playground.

In the harbour gallery, children spun wheels, rang replica ships’ bells and loaded wooden crates on to a model boat. Every successful load produced a cheer from a loudspeaker. Amina discovered that piling everything at one end made the boat tilt. “You have to spread the weight,” she explained, moving the crates until it balanced. I nodded, while privately missing the old museum, where the model boats had possessed the dignity to remain still.

I led her towards the one surviving traditional room. Here, a brass compass from a lifeboat rested in a case beside a neat label giving its date. Amina read the label, said, “That’s quite old,” and moved on.

Back in the noisy gallery, she pressed a button beneath a photograph of a ferry mechanic. Before the recorded voice began its account of a winter crossing, the man cleared his throat. Amina listened to the whole recording twice. “Was he frightened,” she asked, “or was he just cold?” The label beside the compass had supplied a date; this untidy human voice had made her imagine a person. The machines had not distracted her from history. They had brought her close enough to hear a man cough.

I am not completely converted. Not every object needs a soundtrack, and one screen showed an animation so frantic that neither of us could work out what it was meant to explain. I still want one room where silence can settle. But I had mistaken quietness for attention. Amina had looked briefly at the compass; she talked about the mechanic all the way home. Silence may protect old objects, but it can also protect adults from being interrupted.

Text 2: A letter concerning the new town museum, by Thomas Ellwood

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

My dear William,

Yesterday I visited our new town museum, and at first I believed it to be the finest public achievement of my lifetime. “FREE TO ALL” is cut into the stone above the doors, in letters so large that they may be read from the opposite pavement. Inside are cabinets of minerals, stuffed birds, old tools, coins and several machines once used in the mills. To see the history of our town gathered under one roof filled me with pride.

The building was crowded. Families had come directly from work, some still carrying their baskets and wearing dusty coats. Yet the moment they crossed the threshold, they appeared uncertain of themselves. An attendant ordered one man to close his umbrella, though it was already closed, and warned two children not to approach a cabinet which they were still several feet from touching.

Near a case of tools, an elderly woman pointed to a heavy iron pair of shears. She told her grandson that she had used such shears as a girl and showed him, with her hands, how the blades were worked. The boy watched her more carefully than he had watched any label. Presently the attendant came across and said that conversation must be kept to a minimum. The woman lowered her hands and led the child away.

I confess that my first thought was that rules must be obeyed. Without order, such a valuable collection might soon be damaged. But then I noticed how many visitors merely walked along the cases, afraid to ask questions. Some labels used words that I could not understand myself. A little girl was reading one aloud to her younger brother when she too was silenced. We had gathered the town’s possessions, yet seemed determined to exclude the voices of the town.

Do not suppose that I now oppose the museum. The collection is admirable, and it ought to be preserved. But an unlocked door is not the same thing as a welcome. There should be attendants who answer questions, labels that ordinary visitors can understand and a place where those who know the old tools may tell what they know. Otherwise, “FREE TO ALL” describes only the price of entering.

As I left, the stone letters above the door appeared larger than ever, but the promise they made seemed much smaller.

Your affectionate brother,

Thomas

Both of these texts are about visits to public museums.

Compare:

• how and why the writers’ views of the museums change
• how the writers get across these changing views

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