Museums and libraries may pivot from access to attention-sanctuary roles

Evidence

Spatial sanctuaries of attention, too, already exist all around us—if we are willing to recognize them as such. Public libraries and museums, for instance, are well positioned to serve this critical role. Not long ago, these “palaces for the people” made information and visual culture accessible to the public. That function has been rendered largely obsolete by the devices in our pockets. Might repositories of knowledge from the twentieth century become sanctuaries of attention in the twenty-first? — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 348

Categorization

• QUESTION: The open question — whether 20th-century knowledge repositories can become 21st-century attention sanctuaries — is empirically testable and worth tracking.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 348
• XREF: connects to: Interpretation must translate scholarly findings into visitors’ lived identification — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 319