ABSTRACT
The inculcation of professional attitudes and the development of practices are achieved through a host of mechanisms. Not least of these are the atmosphere or ‘culture’ of the workplace, training and the profession’s codes of practice. In this article, published over ten years ago, Neil Cossons, as the President of the Museums Association, positions the museums profession in the context of the professionalization of work, which began in the nineteenth century, and asks key questions about how the profession and museums should develop. This address prefigures a decade of extraordinary change in museums.
