ABSTRACT

Curators make new meanings for objects coming into the museum, and have a large degree of control over how they are understood by visitors. Curators retain control over the way religion appears in museums because they retain the power of choice. Objects are inevitably the slaves of their curators, who choose which ones to acquire, whether to display them or put them in store, and how to display them. Curators also share with priests an arcane knowledge and an authority to control the access of lay people to the 'sacred' things they control. The curator uses increasingly elaborate and sophisticated display techniques to ensure that the visitor responds to the object in the way he or she wants. Museum curators routinely divide the information they have about objects into 'intrinsic' information and 'extrinsic' information. Curators have always been conscious of the challenge of presenting their collections in ways that their visitors will accept and understand.