ABSTRACT
This chapter offers what might appear a rather old-fashioned position on museums and museum items to academics (if not to ordinary people). It draws upon the ideas of the nineteenth-century critic Walter Pater to propose a ‘sport for sport’s sake’ attitude towards sport museums and their items of memorabilia. Is this to suggest that sport museums have a similar cultural status to art galleries and that a football from a famous match may be valued in the manner of a masterpiece? This chapter suggests that this possibility is at least up for discussion.
