ABSTRACT
The litany of the world’s ills, combined with outmoded museum practices and the encroachment of marketplace values, are significant challenges to the future of all museums – not that the long-term survival of museums is a pressing issue anywhere. My interest lies in another direction; not in what museums think they are entitled to receive, but in the contributions they can make to address various socio-environmental issues. Admittedly, the world and its peoples have always been confronted with catastrophic events, and have managed to survive with museums on the sidelines. These catastrophes range from the 1918 influenza epidemic (which killed an estimated 20 to 40 million people worldwide), to the Second World War (which claimed over 70 million lives, making it the deadliest war in history), to HIV/AIDS. In 2007, an estimated 33.2 million people lived with the HIV/AIDS worldwide, and it killed an estimated 2.1 million people, including 330,000 children that year.1
