Notes
- Kenneth Hudson, “The Public Quality of a Museum.” Les cahiers d'étude 6 (1999): 3–5.
- This is the most common metaphor invoked by European curators. It is useful to note that there are both male and female prostitutes, and it is nowhere presumed that prostitutes are only female. However regrettable this practice may be, the metaphor is still used often and vehemently in European debates about museum funding.
- Michael Kimmelman, “Museums in a Quandary: Where Are the Ideals?” The New York Times, August 26, 2001
- For instance, see Alan Riding, “French Government and the Louvre in a War of Words.” The New York Times, January 30, 2002. The article describes a report of the Cour des Comptes, which noted that the autonomy promised to the Louvre in 1993 was to date “largely fictitious” because the museum still had to answer to two Culture Ministry departments, the Reunion of National Museums, which oversees 33 government- owned museums, and the Direction of French Museums, which fixes government subsidies to museums. The government currently provides 70 percent of the Louvre's $110 million annual budget.
- The report also took the Louvre's side in a long-running dispute with one of those departments. As part of a government policy of sharing revenues from ticket sales at the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles with smaller museums, the Louvre gives more than $9 million a year to the Reunion of National Museums and receives only $4 million in return. The report said this diversion of funds prevented the museum from fulfilling its functions.