ABSTRACT
MUSEUMS HAVE DEVELOPED as a consequence of changes in society. From the nineteenth century onwards they were being developed and promoted to the increasingly urbanized working classes as a form of rational leisure (Bennett 1995) with a strongly educative and morally edifying role. As Davis (2007) argues above in the opening quote, museums retain an important role within the modern world as spaces in which to explore, confirm or even reject questions of personal, social and cultural identity and thus to form, re-form and challenge the shaped visions and versions of the past and present. However, museums continue to be defined by their visiting communities (Hooper-Greenhill 2007) and by the staff and political will of the funding bodies, still in many cases directly or indirectly local or national government. This has the inevitable consequence that museums are shaped for, and I argue by, that visiting community, given that museum personnel also tend to be reflected in the museum-going classes.
