Beauty – Truth – Goodness; the complex role and ambiguous role of the museum

There is at present a consensus, more pronounced than for a long time, among curators that we are above all professionals, and as such we collect, list, prepare and exhibit a representative range of objects and buildings to document our cultural heritage. We uphold the old ideal that museums impartially provide knowledge to further the enlightenment of the people. Nevertheless, quite a few among us accept the fact that museums have, and in fact should have, a political role. The era of loud political slogans is gone. However, there is still a strong desire to support some idea or other about community development, albeit in a more modest version than one harking back to the days of the growth of the national state at the turn of the century, or the one reflecting the mobilization of the 70s to strengthen local culture and identity. As a basis for museum work it is nowadays quite legitimate to refer to womens culture, Sami (Lappish) identity and the development of ecological consciousness. A more salient idea is that advocating that museums ought to be of practical use even beyond the traditional sphere of cultural politics, a notion shared by a growing number of politicians, bureaucrats and curators.