Life & Mortality Quote by Robert Hewison

Museums, Hewison concedes, are unimpeachable in isolation: guardians of objects, classrooms for the public, temples to “truth.” That opening is strategic flattery, the kind that clears his throat before the accusation. The pivot word is “collectively,” where a civic virtue turns into a national pathology. One museum is stewardship; a country carpeting itself in museums is, in his view, a culture that has stopped making things worth museumizing.

The line “growth in numbers” is doing more than counting institutions. It implies an economy and a politics: when a society can’t imagine a future, it starts over-investing in curating the past. Museums become a growth industry not because creativity is thriving, but because nostalgia is. Preservation quietly replaces production; commemoration substitutes for risk. “Imaginative death” is blunt on purpose, a diagnosis meant to sting anyone who confuses heritage with vitality.

Hewison’s context matters. Writing from late-20th-century Britain, he’s circling the era of “heritage” as cultural policy and tourism strategy, when deindustrialization and a tightening state made the past feel like a safe export. The museum boom becomes a symptom of retreat: an aestheticized national story offered to visitors and citizens alike, neat and narratable, while the messy work of building new institutions, art, and social confidence stalls.

The subtext is not anti-museum; it’s anti-complacency. He’s warning that a country can become so good at remembering itself that it forgets how to invent itself.