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] argues that over the past ten years, with the proclamation of a new museology the potential of museums as a positive force in society has been raised with renewed vigour [vigor]. But museums seem unable to cope with new challenges. The author warns against the aligning of the concepts museum and art museum in research, policy statements and statistics. The relationship between legitimacy and rationality varies with collection and size. [He] explains the factors that cause the crises in art museums today - which he considers not a crisis of finance but of identity. (General Introduction, p. 15)

CONTENTS
Introduction.
Art museums and other museums.
Publics.
Relevance.
Old and new museums.
Notes [bibliography].

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.