Museums Question: why do we have museums? According to this TED-Ed video, museums evolved as a means to achieve the following: To keep watch over academics; the arts and sciences The preservation of the uncommon, rare, and exotic To showcase a physical encyclopedia of artifacts To serve as a center of scholarship and artistic and scientific discovery Yet, this is what museums do . This doesn't answer why we have museums. Museums tell us what things are. They're collections of artifacts, images, sounds—evidence of something that exists or existed. Art museums, specifically, are a records of our humanity. We preserve visual art because each piece represents a particular moment in the human experience. When Pablo Picasso introduced cubism, he didn't just create something visually, he inspired a multi-dimensional approach to perceiving the world. Museums preserve the development of human intellect, the journey from the shadows to the light. They remind us of ho...