Monday, May 22, 2006

Need for Winnipeg's Museum on human rights

Short qualifying answer is: " I would place such a museum near the bottom of a list for museums".
I would however recommend expanding our existing museum of man and nature and other Winnipeg museums supplemented with the digital world using the internet- vide infra.
Lobbing and campaigning for the Human Rights museum in Winnipeg is well underway and with their aggressive promotion tactics it will soon become a reality. So I guess my comments may be redundant. However I will express them anyway. That's what Blogs are all about.
It does surprise me though that no one has really questioned the need for such a museum. In Washington I have visited the Smithsonian Institute and found it very informative from seeing the apparel worn by reputed famous people (Alfonso's leather jacket) to the aircraft used by Lindberg in his transatlantic flight. Briefly its a museum to show the accomplishments by the human race over the centuries in various fields of endeavour. I cant recall areas of the museum devoted to slavery and other discriminations conducted by the Americans over the centuries. If such were present then they were rather inconspicuous and not their main theme. Why do we want a museum to record the bad or evil things we do or have done in the past ?
Displaying in museums these evil and/or unethical activities executed by humans against other humans to the inquisitive and imaginative minds of our youth can only have a negative effect of dampening their enthusiasm and creativity.
Rather than spend over 300 million dollars for this Winnipeg museum plus an annual maintenance costs estimated in the tens of millions, the promoters of this Winnipeg museum would better serve the public with our money by converting the museum to the digital world. I understand that Microsoft is doing just that with specific American university libraries- indeed book publishers are now not only urged but soon will be making dual formats of their books- the ordinary books for the shelves of book stores and another for the digital world- where you can read the book in the comfort of your home with just a few clicks of the mouse.

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