It could be a museum
The Budapest Zoological and Botanical Gardens
MúzeumCafé 43.
About 18 months ago MúzeumCafé carried an article about whether zoological and botanical gardens in Hungary could at all be considered museums. The answer was that, despite certain similarities in function, zoos cannot be regarded as public collections, the decisive reason being the large difference between the collecting basis of the two types of institutes – i.e. ‘dead’ and ‘living’ material. Yet can this opinion really stand the test, or can we treat it as a general statement that might allow for exceptions? There is a noticeable tendency in the world for different cultural institutes – among them zoos and public collections – to break out of their restricted profiles and gradually extend the sphere of their activities. The root causes of this process are both professional and social expectations, as there is increased public demand for the social use of knowledge. In the case of zoos, one of the noticeable alternatives is the assumption of some tasks characteristically associated with public collections, such that there are now numerous examples in the world where zoological and botanical gardens function in the manner of museum institutes. What is typical is that as a consequence of their individual development these gardens reach a professional level which leads to the increasingly deliberate performance of the organically formed functions of public collections. An important part is played in this by the shifts of epoch, the raising of specifically local social expectations and naturally the mission of the given institute, its historical foundation, and the appreciation of the intellectual values that preserve its own past. Having said that, there are at the same time numerous examples of public collections and specialist museums expanding their activities with the characteristic tasks of zoological and botanical gardens.