* Modern museums tend to cater to the general public, which means interesting and unique pieces that are of primary importance to experts in the field are often not on display.
* Private collectors are often better at making their collections available in meaningful ways.
* The bulk of a museum's collection tends not to be displayed at any one time.
Of course, it's a risk if he were to transfer his collection to another private individual - a museum is the safer option. But I don't think the decision clear cut either.
Museums have been dumbed down. The Henry Ford museum near Detroit was once aimed at people like Henry Ford, who liked the engineering. Glass cases with "Capacitor, Cornell-Dublier, 1944". That sort of thing. I once spent about fifteen minutes figuring out a piece of machinery which turned out to be a combination camera/kinescope scanner for rotating disk television. It was labeled something like "Scanner, Baird system, ca. 1935". That was dumbed down some time in the 1980s.
The Smithsonian's Museum of History and Technology had some original ENIAC panels, powered up! You could push buttons and make them count. They had a huge collection of clock escapements, which they kept wound. An Atlas Guidance Computer with someone who operated it once an hour. The original Perceptron.
Now it's the Museum of American History, and much simplified.
>Private collectors are often better at making their collections available in meaningful ways.
Citation very much needed. The vast majority of items in private collections, including the entirety of the vast majority of private collections, are unknown, uncatalogued, and utterly unavailable.
yeah, this reeks of confirmation bias. It's cool that Steve Jurvetson lets CuriousMarc play with his collection to this extent, and what we got out of it has been amazing, but I don't assume this to be the general case.
Counterexample: The AGC they restored was sold and then never heard from again. Of course it must be said that they had the opportunity to restore it to begin with because it was privately owned. Although if you're into vintage computing, you'll see there's also museums who loan out pieces to youtubers to restore/make videos about.
Private collectors can be great, but the risk of collections in private hands being dissolved on death is substantial. I say this as a Seattle native who's been saddened by what happened to Paul Allen's various collections after his passing.
It's a good example, but it's entirely Paul's fault. A trust is not exactly rocket science or esoteric, and if Paul actually cared about any of these things he had many years to just ask lawyers to set something up with a few million in reserves for each of the Living Computer Museum, Cinerama, SciFi Museum, etc. (and many months after his final diagnosis to tell some lawyer to go do so).
The fact that he did not shows that he just wanted tax breaks for his toys and is a great example of why private collections aren't great.
Public museums are not bad per se, but they have a lot of disadvantages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO6F9CfgMg4
My summary of the argument:
* Modern museums tend to cater to the general public, which means interesting and unique pieces that are of primary importance to experts in the field are often not on display.
* Private collectors are often better at making their collections available in meaningful ways.
* The bulk of a museum's collection tends not to be displayed at any one time.
Of course, it's a risk if he were to transfer his collection to another private individual - a museum is the safer option. But I don't think the decision clear cut either.