William Walker uses his work, A Living Exhibition, to discuss James Smithson’s extraordinary legacy to the United States hand how it has taken on a life of its own as the Smithsonian in its entirety is the largest museum organization in the world. It is a narrative that has chooses to focus on the role of the museum today as a mediator for nations and societies experiencing social change, dealing with problematic histories, and vigorously attempting to resolve the ambitions of dissimilar cultural and social groups. Despite its size, stage of development, and motivation it has not quite attracted the consideration of historians around the world. This lack of attention is what has drawn Walker to this small, but growing discipline of museological studies. Walker purportedly is …show more content…
Some of the dominant ideas were a national university, a library, a planetary observatory, or a nationwide museum? The final decision, which yielded a national museum simply led to many more debates. The museum’s commissioners disagreed on whether the Smithsonian would best serve the nation as a site for enquiry and investigation, which covered growth model, or for education and entertainment, which covered diffusion. Would they pursue, in Enlightenment fashion, a museum covering the breadth and width of natural history and the history of man, or follow a university model that fostered education and academic growth? As the discipline of museum studies as grown in the last half-century it is evident that this question is generally at the center of the museum debate. That is, what is the purpose of museums? Walker discusses and dissects the positive that the Smithsonian project meant for Americana, but also the negative aspects and internal disunions that followed in the 1960s through the 80s that must also be part of the