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Opinion

The perfect spirit of an old museum

Not every exhibit needs a new outlook

By Joan Wickersham

 |   

  January 27, 2012

Invigorating and beneficial as museum expansion can be, there is also a beauty, and an intellectual and emotional value, in a museum that stays the same. Some of the most powerful museums I know are the ones that feel most deeply planted in the past. They can teach us something not just about the objects displayed, but about how those objects were regarded at an earlier time and how they came to be in the museum.

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