For my part, I'd say that its name hasn't yet been found, for if it's true that one only definitively names things that one can grasp, then the museum must be most difficult to define.
- Marc-Antoine Mathieu,
The Museum Vaults
A building containing artifacts and security guards? A house full of memories? A shoebox holding souvenirs from your last vacation? A Flickr page? The Web? Must it educate? Must it inspire? Should we care?
In the early twenty-first century, we have forgotten (if we ever knew) that museums have not always been places to go, full of things to see - and neither are they still. The term has a long history stretching back centuries and an appeal that now stretches around the world. In all of that time and space, it has proved terrifically elastic, referring to things that exist in buildings, in books, sometimes only in thought, maybe only in dreams.
These usages are defined in different contexts. The American Association of Museums crafts one definition to suit its purposes; Matt Celeskey abides by another. What these definitions do seem to share is a sense of how "museum" creates an expectation of information presented within a structure. It is a way to impose order on time, on truth. ... Or is it a way to confront the lack thereof?
What is a museum? More importantly, who is to say?