Introduction

Museums are among the public institutions that felt the effects of broad societal change in the 1990s. Their responses to these social forces have had an impact on their internal policies and structures, producing change from the outside in. Museums should assess their roles in light of economic, demographic, and technological changes in the world at large and in their own communities. The technological changes cited in articles written in the early 1990s are proceeding at a dizzying pace. Museums need firmness in their commitment to educational goals and flexibility in responding to social change. When commitment to mission undergirds the approach to societal change, museum programs are both focused and flexible. Museums are being transformed through the implementation of a variety of internal initiatives: changes in approaches to exhibition development, in defining new learning communities, and in restructuring and reconceiving the entire way a museum responds to its public.