What is a museum?

What is a museum?  A building holding old valuable object behind glass cabinets?  That sounds more like a mausoleum and thus prompts Andrea Witcomb to write her article, Re-imagining the museum: Beyond the Mausoleum.  This 2003 piece touches upon hierarchy, cultural power, technology, and materiality as components of the museum's evolution through history.  Both Witcomb and Tony Bennett, who pens "Civic Seeing" and is often quoted by Witcomb, cite the 19th century as a turning point in the  museum world.

Bennet points out that "exhibition practices from the pre-Enlightenment period when the eye was not so singularly addressed or so authoritatively regulated," are making a comeback to facilitate the modern audience's yearning for a multiple sensory experience in tourism.  Along these lines, I think many would agree that museums should not just regurgitate a timeline - but should be interactive, to an extent (without being a full blown children's museum) in order to make learning and civic engagement more immediate to the vast public.

Witcomb cites the Parisian "culture of looking" as a proponent in the "emergence of tourism as a popular activity." Paris lined their streets with restaurants and shops, making everything 'gaze-worthy' for pedestrians and the increasing number of tourists as vacationing became a regular activity.

Richard Handler and Eric Gable's book, The New History in an Old Museum, further examine the shift in "cultural tourism," which could be an umbrella term for museums and historical sites, and the struggle to balance consumerism and authentic an dissemination of history.  They use Colonial Williamsburg as their prime example of a hybrid historical site/entertainment park in America.
If I may digress into how "Alysea fell in love with history," I was one of 'those kids' who kicked and screamed while being dragged toured around Colonial Williamsburg by my parents in first grade, until we found an interactive house that was serving a traditional 18th century meal and teaching angsty elementary school students 18th century games. I walked back out onto the gravel street a changed kid, and before you knew it, I had 2 American Girl dolls and said history was my favorite school subject.
So does "entertainment in history" work in tourism? YES, for the young children who need to be engaged with multiple sensory activities.  But is this public history?  Is Colonial Williamsburg a "museum" by the standards of Witcomb and Bennett?  I would say, Colonial Williamsburg is historical preservation, which goes hand in hand with the traditional institutional museum, and without one or the other, public history may be at a standstill...thank goodness for evolution.