by Elaine Heumann Gurian

In this paper, I suggest that museums have not explored their potential opportunities enough when dealing with their communities under stressful conditions. Each reader, however, should decide when what I am talking about is no longer appropriate for museums in general or your museum in particular. While some museums have moved more in the direction of serving their communities, I am struck by how little philosophical change has actually taken place in most museums after a year into this universal economic downturn. I argue that incorporating a broader palette of social services may make institutions more useful, but at some point these institutions might cease to be traditional museums. My question would be: ‘‘Should you care?’’ I do not suggest that all museums become full-service community centers, though somemight explore that option. Perhaps the question might become: How do we expand our services so that we make museums’ important physical assets of safe civic space and objects useful for tangible three-dimensional learning into more relevant programs that reach all levels of community, and are rated by many more as essential to their needs and their aspirations for their children?

by JOHN FRASER

This study asked why parents value zoo experiences for themselves and their children. It proposes a new theory regarding the psychological value of such experiences for the development of identity. The study used a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore parenting perspectives on the value of zoo visits undertaken by eight families from three adjacent inner-city neighborhoods in a major American city. The results suggest that parents use zoo visits as tools for promoting family values. These parents felt that experiences with live animals were necessary to encourage holistic empathy, to extend children’s sense of justice to include natural systems, and to model the importance of family relationships. The author concludes that parents find zoos useful as a tool for helping their children to develop skills with altruism, to transfer environmental values, to elevate children’s self-esteem, and to inculcate social norms that they believe will aid in their children’s social success in the future.

Photograph by Julie Larsen Maher, staff photographer of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, NY, courtesy of the WCS.