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HUMANITIES 423 Archie F. Key, Beyond Four Walls: The Origins and Development of Canadian Museums. McClelland and Stewart 1973, $12.50 Beyond Four Walls is the first general account of museums in Canada in narrative form. As such it is a welcome addition to the small shelf of works on the subject which so far have been almost exclusively of a statistical nature, ie, directories, inventories, and reports. The title emphasizes that museums are no longer 'static institutions confined within four walls.' The all-inclusive scope of the book is based on the definition of museum as extending to 'all collections, open to the public, of artistic, technical, scientific, historical or archaeological material, including zoos, botanical gardens, but excluding libraries except insofar as they maintain permanent exhibition rooms.' As a result the number and variety of collections dealt with is both impressive and bewildering. In a list placed at the end of the book, the author enumerates 2146 museums, 258 more than in the 1972 Directory of Museums, Art Galleries and Related Institutions published by Statistics Canada in 1973. However, the author admits that in some cases he has found it difficult to distinguish between 'Tourist Attractions' and bona fide museums. This comprehensive approach ensures that even those museums which may not survive are recorded here. The text is divided into four unequal sections. The first two are devoted respectively to past and present collections in Europe and the United States. The third section deals with museums in Canada from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The last and most important section (comprising about half the book) is a detailed record of the remarkable 'museum explosion' which occurred in the 1960s stimulated by the provision of funds from the federal government (and other public and private agencies) on the occasion of the Centennial celebrations. The author, former national director of the Canadian Museums Association , has a personal knowledge of this phase of the development of Canadian museums. The book is in fact based on a survey of Canadian museum resources, commissioned by the CMA, which took three years and during which the author travelled 52,000 miles by car. The author's enthusiasm for his subject is evident but his organization of the material impairs the value of the book as a work of reference. The sections on European and American museums are an arbitrary collection of facts from the history of museums and not relevant to the rest of the book. The geographical arrangement of the Canadian material, which echoes that of earlier directories, is not satisfactory because no trends or patterns emerge. An analysis of the different types of museums and of their relative importance as well as a critical assessment of the comparative merits of museums within each type would have been useful. The author is a journalist rather than a historian and his search for records has been at best perfunctory. The titles of the sections are too vague and there are no chapter headings. The list of museums, by province from east to west, is an imperfect index and lacks cross-references to the names of institutions. The index proper is incomplete and its effectiveness is impaired by the use of too many sub-sections. All authors quoted are not represented in the bibliography, which is haphazard. There are no footnotes and many sources are not given or are incompletely identified. Names are frequently misspelt, a fault to be attributed to the publisher as much as to the author. Finally, the absence of illustrations is to be deplored as no visual record of the architecture of Canadian museums exists so far. (SYBILLE PANTAZZI) Cyril S. Belshaw, Towers Besieged: The Dilemma of the Creative University. McClelland and Stewart, 224, $5.95 (paper) This book is, as far as I know, the first systematic attempt by a Canadian scholar to present the general theory of the university, and to see its activities in relationship to that theory. Professor Belshaw, however, is not writing a major textbook; he has strong convictions and he is deeply concerned about specific Canadian developments. General books on education are not noted for their stylistic grace, and this book is not...

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