Seeing today by considering the past

Museums should also be high on this list. We believe they’re deeply underrated key players in civic life.

That’s because it’s too easy to think of museums as primarily places to visit on a quiet weekend, whiling away a few hours in a comfortable environment. That’s fine as far as it goes. But museums are – and can be – much, much more.

They’re institutions that bind us together – as metro Atlantans, as Americans — by bringing people into common physical spaces to experience our past and its time-traveling influences affecting us to this day.

Events happen, people react — and history is made. That hasn’t changed since time’s dawn. What matters is what we make of all that — how we assess where we’ve been, what got us there and how it affects us today. Only then, we’d suggest, can we fully consider and act on the issues surrounding, challenging and vexing us today.

That should be part of the normal processes of a well-ordered society — working through human passions, pressures, fears and desires in a manner that results in better individuals and communities.

During a discussion of the Civil War last August at the Cyclorama, consultant Anthony Knight hit squarely on why museums are needed “I think we have to remember people are what they’ve always been — complex, confused and conflicted,” he said. “We ask all these questions with a 21st-century mind. How will our views evolve and change over time, perhaps even in the blink of an eye?”

Museums can help answer such profound queries from those who believe, like Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living. Better citizens and communities will result from such inquiries. Which makes Atlanta’s museums deserving of our support and patronage.

There’s no easier time to do so than during the first ATL Museum Week, which runs through May 1 at 36 area museums which are offering special admissions deals. See atlmuseumweek.com for details.