In a provocative way, David Fleming, Director of the National Museums of
Liverpool, has criticized the object-driven focus of museum curators in city
museums. He speaks of “object worship almost to the point of fetishism.”7
Although these curators may have acknowledged the limitations of tangible
collections in telling city histories, the object-oriented approach has remained
the standard of museum professionalism for a very long time.8 These collections,
however, do not reflect urban history in general very well and most visitors
lack the contextual information needed to link the objects to the urban
historical context. Besides, most city museums have difficulties collecting the
recent history.