When and where did museums similar to those with which we’re familiar today actually start?

Should museums of the future prioritise collections or audiences? The problem with this well-worn debate is that it risks overshadowing a third essential aspect of their mission: namely research.

I have recently taken up the directorship of the small but vibrant Medical Museion in Copenhagen, where research is at the heart of much of what goes on. Not just focussed on its collections, the investigators it hosts also pursue interests in such diverse topics as the smell of hospitals, healthy aging and the connections between mind and gut. Collectively, they have fashioned a distinctive form of museum enquiry, one that is methodologically promiscuous, frequently multi-disciplinary and often focussed on topics that have a broad resonance: research that makes sense in public.

hope dis helps