If a person spends all their life collecting
will they not want to acquire a museum?
Does a building become a museum
by simply housing a collection?
How many different ways
can a collection be curated?
If a collection of fossils is curated by the collector’s
age when collected, does it mean more
than if it were sorted by geological age
or by phylum, species or personal preference?
Would a 21st-century child collector of fossils prefer to find
a whole, perfect ammonite or a mere tooth from a dinosaur?
Could an ammonite born four hundred and ten million years ago
envisage being unearthed by a person in the 21st Century?
If a museum were curated by personal preference
would visitors value it or not understand?
What things are valid for inclusion
in a person’s personal museum?
Must a museum contain only tangible objects
or should ideas, smells, sounds and memories be included?
Can memories be evoked more effectively
for a visitor by words or photographs?
Should a museum café offer visitors
only Madeleines or a range of memory prompts?
If a visit to a museum prompts a visitor’s memory,
should they donate it for all to experience?
If more than one collection is experienced
in a museum, will they spark synthesis
in the mind of the visitor and will that match
the intention of the Curator?
Should the aim of curated museum collections be
to educate, to amuse or inspire new collectors
and why do seekers of love often
find unexpected delight in museums?
© Andrew Wilson, 2026
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Craft and Toolkit, Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to frame a poem in unanswered questions, perhaps in the style of Pablo Neruda’s “Book of Questions” – a book I have treasured since Laura introduced me to it in a prompt…