“No one ever flunked a museum.” - Frank Oppenheimer

“Ditto the library.” - me

Libraries and museums, the twin sisters of free choice, object based, interest driven learning, are the ideal spaces for wild, creative cognitive leaps and profound experiences of self competency.

These spaces steward our past, illuminate our present, and catalyze our future!

With thanks to John Cotton Dana, Eleanor Duckworth, Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, and Maria Montessori…

Community Currency: End to the "Fee or Free" Debate

Heather D. Martin

The Museum Scholar, Volume 1, Number 1, 2017

Museums are hotbeds of debate. Questions arise around cultural appropriation, artifact repatriation, and the definition of “planet,” to name a few. Yet, one debate remains unanswered, fueling passions and igniting tempers: the question of to charge or to abolish admission fees. Researchers have conducted diverse studies, data is collected, and articles are published on this topic, but no definite conclusions have been established. The center of this argument questions whether fees create a barrier to museum access, or whether free admission diminishes a museum’s perceived or real value. The “fee or free” debate rages on. …