Paper presented at the conference Art Museums and the Price of Success; an International Comparison, held at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on December 10 and 11, 1992, and organized by the Boekman Foundation, Amsterdam.

[The author] ... makes it clear ... that American museums have always had to struggle to raise funds from many sources to survive. This helped them to avoid over-dependence on a single source (as is the case in many European countries where museums are often dependent on government support). Art museums have an uneasy relationship with democracy: according to research in the and France they still attract largely the highly-educated public. This is partly because museums are in a double bind: they exist both for the public and for a highly professional (art) world - which is often seen as the more important. [The author] pleads for more serious attention to education and the role of education in (American) museums so that they are no longer the elite preserve of the past but provide an elite experience for everyone. (General Introduction, p. 13)

CONTENTS
Introduction.
But what about the public?
Art museums and democracy: an uneasy relationship.
Education.
The advocate of the visitor.
An elite experience for everyone.
Notes [bibliography].

American museums have always had to struggle to raise funds from many sources to survive. This helped them to avoid over-dependence on a single source (as is the case in many European countries where museums are often dependent on government support). Art museums have an uneasy relationship with democracy: according to research in the and France they still attract largely the highly-educated public. (from abstract)