What Is a Museum?

⊙ By Emily Grassley ⊙ 翻译：Portia

《现代汉语词典》说：博物馆是“搜集、保管、研究、陈列、展览有关革命、历史、文化、艺术、自然科学、技术等方面的文物或标本的机构”。可在普通人眼里，博物馆究竟是什么呢？我们一起来听听普通人都是怎么想的吧。

What is your1)definition [defɪ΄nɪʃ(ə)n] n. 定义definition of a museum?

✧ It’s a place where they have lots of things?

✧ A museum is a place where the past lives.

✧ It’s a place you can go on the weekend,and you can have fun lookin’ over things that are older than you are and learn something.

✧ I would consider a museum kind of a place to educate yourself on many different topics.

✧ I think a museum is a collection of2)artifact [΄ɑːtɪfækt] n. 手工艺品artifacts and3)specimen [΄spesɪmən] n. 样品，标本specimens that people can use from around the world. And it’s not just that they’re here and they’re like these dead,4)idle [΄aɪd(ə)l] adj. 无用的idle objects. They’re important for current research and future research.

✧ They’re places of history, places of science, places of learning.

✧ A museum is like something that there’s bones and stuff.

✧ …where we go to find our roots and how we became these creatures.

✧ It’s the place to experience5)wonder [΄wʌndə(r)] n. 惊奇，奇观wonder.

✧ A museum is a place of magic and discovery, a place where people come and have their lives changed by little things that they discover here.

✧ A museum allows us to explore and find answers to questions we didn’t even know we had.

✧ A museum is not just about looking at the past. It’s about feeling the past.

✧ It starts with a collection, it goes to the people that research and use that collection to answer various questions about the natural history of this planet, both cultural and biological, and past, present and using that information to predict the future. And then,6)ultimately [΄ʌltɪmətlɪ] adv. 最后，最终ultimately, it’s up to a museum to present that information to the public, either through7)exhibit [ɪɡ΄zɪbɪt] n. 展览品exhibits or through education programs to tell the world what it is we learn from the specimens we have here. That’s what a museum is to me.

So, what do you think a museum is?