A museum should not just be a place for fancy paintings but should be a place where we can communicate our lives through our everyday objects.
And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums.
I do not think that a museum needs to engage with pop culture in order to make itself interesting to museumgoers. Museums are already interesting and engaging with pop culture for its own sake is just a quick way to seem and become dated.
Shouldn't a great museum foster serious seeing before all else?
A collection that embraces the whole world allows you to consider the whole world. That is what an institution such as the British Museum is for.
The distinction between a gallery and a museum is enormous. The gallery is about looking at a thing of beauty; the purpose of the activity is an aesthetic response. The museum is actually about the object that lets you get into somebody else's life.
I do not approve of museums trying just to get people to come in. Whistler was very, very clear on this.
