How can I call a museum insane?
I saw such a museum made up of 7000 items from the University of Tokyo. The museum is in a brand new elegant mall.
There was some coherence in each cubicle of items. Such as 10 devices used 100 years ago to exemplify the principles of mechanical engineering. All displays were beautifully designed and constructed. The museum itself was of the highest aesthetic quality.
Right next to the engineering display were a dozen articles used for fabric pattern making design. There were insect collections. Collections of bones. The entire museum was a cluster of such independent unrelated objects covering a 150 year time frame.
I call this 'insane' because it resembles the kind of collection that one of my neighbors has that fills his house from floor to ceiling and only allows for a narrow path in the middle from the bedroom to the bathroom and kitchen. I have seen several such houses where the collection comprised 98% of the interior space. These people are insane but allowed to walk the streets.
Having seen such a collection in an elegant museum format I realize that the insanity has nothing to do with the amount in the collection, nor the aesthetics. It is solely because of the lack of a visible organizing principle or meaning. That defines insanity.
This is by way of reminding my readers that I have long been a proponent of Social Thought.
Social Thought teaches that all institutions are organized around a pillar that is an idea, image or metaphor. Insanity is the absence of such a pillar.