Private collections of museum curators

[Jerry Bricker]

>on 9/26/02 10:15 PM, Adolf Ceska at aceska at TELUS.NET wrote:
>
>>  Some museums forbid their curators to keep private collections.
>>  They claim that curators should not compete with their own institutions.
>>  I know one lepidopterologist who was asked to give up his collection of
>>  butterflies (it was almost complete for that region) when he accepted a
>>  temporary curatorial position in a museum.
>>
>>  Adolf Ceska, Victoria, B.C., Canada
>>
>Many have this policy. Some allow you to keep it, but you're forbidden to
>add to it.


That is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard!  Are you saying
that a publicly funded institution is controlling what a person does
on their own time outside of the workplace?  Even if that person puts
in longs days at low pay with exemplary performance?

Do they also forbid their employees to dance, listen to the devil's
music (i.e., rock and roll), drink alcohol, or read books that will
"corrupt" them?

So much for academic and intellectual freedom.  We clearly haven't
progressed much past the Inquisition, McCarthyism, or witch burnings
have we?  Fanaticism clearly is a disease that corrupts not only
religion and politics but science as well.

JB
--

_______________________________________

Jerry Bricker
Assistant Prof. of Biology
Department of Biological Sciences
Cameron University
2800 W. Gore Blvd.
Lawton, OK 73505
Phone: 580-581-2374
FAX: 580-591-8004
E-mail: jeraldbr at cameron.edu
Website: http://www.cameron.edu/~jeraldbr

"If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. In that simple
statement is the key to science. It doesn't matter how beautiful the
theory is, how smart you are, or what your name is - if it disagrees
with experiment, it's wrong."

Richard P. Feyman