Anyone can collect, but there is a clear line that is crossed once a collection reaches grand proportions, the decision is made to display, thus a museum is born.
With the right amount of funding, and an idea to sell and attract the masses, a museum can be started out of anything. The Mutter Museum is dedicated to medical anomalies. This museum is melded with science to better educate doctors, but once its collection grew, the museum was founded. Another example, is the Museum of Sex, is positioning its prominence on the scale of museums, as it takes a collection or theme, and markets it to the public. Some Museums are dedicated to the history and preservation of a specific and select group of artists, while others are born out of the collectors fascination with only one subject matter.
I was reading recently and came across a rather unusual Banana Club Museum, which goes to show that if there is enough being collected, someone will try to market it, sensationalizing it. But, as the article reads, not everyone is going to be willing to back outrageous collections. The difference between the Museum of Sex and The Banana Club Museum is marketing and accessibility. The Banana Club Museum will not encounter as many curious viewers. Also, from a curation standpoint, the collection is stagnant, there is only so much one can do with a Banana Collection.
Good - take a look though at your links regarding the Mutter Museum (a wonderful museum!). You like to the museum at the word anything, and then have no link to the museum itself. so that's a little weird. And again, I would have liked a link in there to something deeper on the weirdest of the vast variety of museums or something like that. Also, the writing felt a little thin? Knowing your interest and having seen some of your insights, i bet you could have given us some good opinion as to what makes a good musuem, etc. For future reference!
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