WetNapsters

Ah, to spend an afternoon browsing the hallowed halls of the Moist Towelette Museum. Here's another quirky/fun collection that's labeled with the "M" word, bringing up again that serious question of what is or ain't a museum.

Nope, the gov'mint doesn't hand out Museum licenses the way they do, say, FCC licenses or Social Security IDs. It's the Wild West out there, and any crazy kid with a dream can display their collection and name it 'Museum'. And, you know, there's nothing really wrong with that. The only trouble is that without some sort of hallmark of quality, some set of baseline criteria, it's difficult for us Public to evaluate what we're getting in a given Museum. You look, you think, questions arise, and entities like the Moist Toweletter Museum may not give satisfying answers.

How much research has gone into the interpretive text?
There's number 5 on the back to the right and it means something to somebody somewhere. Promise

How much mastery of the subject area does the curator have?
I'm all about the packaging and moist towelettes are sensible and the packaging is often thoughtful, creative, or funny. Even if it has boring packaging, it will still keep one clean(er). Indeedy. Moist towelettes have historical and cultural significance, for reals. Well, maybe just for me.

Are the objects being cared for with the best understanding of preservation techniques available, so they'll last into perpetuity?

The actual examples are stored air-tight in a cool dark environment

Hmmmm.

No, I know it's not really fair to pick on a museum like this one, with its white-homeboy-hipster interpretive voice and hobbyist nature. In fact, I'm all for the proliferation of the quirky obsessive collection in this all-too-serious world. I wish there were more of 'em. Still, it's just so tricky to call these things 'museums'. By using that name, collections and their owners signal that they're aspiring to more than just the presentation of curiosities. Alternatively, others use the name when they're going for a tongue-in-cheek, ironic juxtaposition; a highfalutin, overserious name for a goofy little thing. The American Sign Museum (below) is doing the former; the Moist Towelette Musuem, the latter.

For those of us who work in rigorous institutions and pride ourselves on accuracy, research, and quality, we who agonize over questions of interpretation, preservation, and presentation, it's kind of embarassing that it's perfectly all right for the Moist Towelette collection to carry the same institutional appellation as, say, the Victoria and Albert. You know? Kind of like the way legitimate PhDs feel when they're seated at a dinner party with people whose titular Doctorates in Creation Science or Paranormal Studies came from bogus online degree mills.

The AAM, of course, exists to try and bring law and order into this free-wheeling OK Corral. They've created a definition of "Museum," with accompanying criteria, standards, and practices. Museums are invited to apply for AAM accreditation, to be granted only to museums which meet those criteria. AAM accreditation functions as a kind of mark of basic quality: like the Better Homes & Gardens Seal of Approval, only not for toaster ovens and irons.

A museum, AAM says, exists to make a "unique contribution to the public by collecting, preserving, and interpreting the things of this world." Those three verbs, collecting, preserving, and interpreting, and the noun phrase that follows, the things of this world, are the most flavor-packed little nuggets of definition. They're the litmus test for whether a presentation of stuff might be really worthy of the name "Museum".

But even that simple statement brings up concerns within the field. What about children's museums, whi ch might not do any preservation at all? What about the most recent rage for sexy topic museums like the Spy Museum, which is short on actual objects and is more about ideas? Similarly, there's Plimoth Plantation, which has a few original Plymouth Colony buckles, spoons, and clay pots on display, but other than that is made up completely of reproductions? Collect, preserve, interpret. The balance isn't always perfectly tripartite.

The AAM's definition is wordy but generous. It's careful not to build an exclusive definition of museum, so it specifically mentions "governmental and private museums of anthropology, art history and natural history, aquariums, arboreta, art centers, botanical gardens, children's museums, historic sites, nature centers, planetariums, science and technology centers, and zoos". It does stipulate that somebody's got to get paid for this - disqualifying a lot of hobby museums in one drastic swoop. A laundry list of criteria, right up front, specifies that museums must:

* Be a legally organized nonprofit institution or part of a nonprofit organization or government entity
* Be essentially educational in nature
* Have a formally stated and approved mission
* Use and interpret objects and/or a site for the public presentation of regularly scheduled programs and exhibits
* Have a formal and appropriate program of documentation, care, and use of collections and/or objects
* Carry out the above functions primarily at a physical facility/site
* Have been open to the public for at least two years
* Be open to the public at least 1,000 hours a year
* Have accessioned 80 percent of its permanent collection
* Have at least one paid professional staff with museum knowledge and experience
* Have a full-time director to whom authority is delegated for day-to-day operations

That's a long list of demands. No wonder only 750 of the nation's museums have this accreditation (besides which, seeking accreditation is a long, painful, documentation-intensive process which you have to undergo every 10 years). The Moist Towelette Museum might, at present, come up short.

Is that to say the MTM isn't cool? No -- it is, and lemony-scented and refreshing, too. I certainly enjoyed my browse, and any graphic designer or 20th-century social historian would find plenty to ruminate on there. It just isn't a museum yet, at least not by professional standards. Some deeper historical and/or art-historical interpretation would be a good next step. And, if I may be so bold, I'd also recommend a "formally stated and approved mission" other than:

This site was created in 2002 by my damnself, for my damnself because I damnwell wanted to.