He's right that museums could see more of their deep collection as an asset. What he's missing is what the Museum sees as its mission. Curation is the main part of it, as opposed to the Library, for example, where access is primary.
Museums collect artworks erratically. Often--and this was worse in the past, but there's fallout today--in order to get the best works, they take many additional works from a donor. They never really wanted those other works, and simply to display them (or to offer them to other institutions/locations for display), without curatorial moderation, would shirk their most important responsibility, that of interpretation.
"Curation" is a word we started to use for lots of activities that are nowhere near the level of effort a professional art curator applies to the task. To ask a museum to display all those works without intense curatorial effort is a significantly bigger change than I think this author understands.
He should keep up the pressure, however. Lots of museums have, or are, putting their entire collections online, with pictures when they have them. Even that was hard for them--to present simply the data without the interpretation--and continues to be. But it's cheap, compared to professionally sharing the actual artworks, so if that took 12 years (I'm looking at 1999-2011) it's going to be a while, and require a lot of demand, before he gets what he's asking for.
Museums collect artworks erratically. Often--and this was worse in the past, but there's fallout today--in order to get the best works, they take many additional works from a donor. They never really wanted those other works, and simply to display them (or to offer them to other institutions/locations for display), without curatorial moderation, would shirk their most important responsibility, that of interpretation.
"Curation" is a word we started to use for lots of activities that are nowhere near the level of effort a professional art curator applies to the task. To ask a museum to display all those works without intense curatorial effort is a significantly bigger change than I think this author understands.
He should keep up the pressure, however. Lots of museums have, or are, putting their entire collections online, with pictures when they have them. Even that was hard for them--to present simply the data without the interpretation--and continues to be. But it's cheap, compared to professionally sharing the actual artworks, so if that took 12 years (I'm looking at 1999-2011) it's going to be a while, and require a lot of demand, before he gets what he's asking for.