I never understood the benefit of public museums, especially in the internet age.
If you want to look at some artifacts without touching it, you could google it and see it.
Also in public museums a lot of artifacts get damaged due to visitors behaviors.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep the old artifacts at storage facility and release a high quality pictures of it instead of putting it in a museum?
Is there is a benefit for public museums?
Absolutely. If you haven’t seen Washington Crossing the Deleware in person, you simply haven’t experienced it properly. You don’t get the sense of scale on the internet. Same with the Louvre, d’Orsay or any other world-class museum. Even local museums like the Columbia Maritime Museum in Astoria OR has exhibits and stories that really require that intimate exposure to be engrossed in the information. It transforms your reception to the exhibits and cannot be replicated virtually.
100%
And that god-awful frame they constructed for it, haha.