ABSTRACT
A museum is a kind of technology, a means to preserve and present objects in the same sense that a book can be described as a technology to preserve and communicate information, ideas and images. Like all such technologies, the uses to which a museum can be put are more or less infinite in their variety. If their straightforward purpose is to preserve and present objects, the reasons for preserving them, the ideas that the objects are used to communicate, the political situation in which that communication happens – all such things can vary in very complex ways. In the Western world, broadly speaking, the idea of a museum is taken for granted. But in Melanesia the possible uses of this technology have been the subject of many experiments. Alongside the major national museums, many local and regional museums and cultural centres have been founded in different places, with a diversity of different objectives. Some of these have existed only fleetingly; others have thrived through several decades. Those that have survived have often altered over time, as a result of local experiment and of national transformations.
