A Fine Balance

We are in the midst of a revolution in the design and management of the world’s museums and galleries. They are being refashioned by borrowing technologies and techniques first seen in Hollywood and theme parks. Cities are using museums as anchors for urban renewal; they hire starchitects and promote their buildings as attractions in themselves, sometimes as important as the works they house.

Today’s “total visitor experience” relies on scenario creators, scriptwriters, lighting crews and set designers, as much as on expert curators and researchers. These changes have brought immeasurable popularity and renewal to the museum world. But they have also brought serious concerns about the effects of populism and the downgrading of thoughtful museum work, well summed up by The Guardian’s warning about “the slippery slide of mass cultural folly.”

Enter onto this stage the newest member in Canada’s network of federally owned national museums, the...