Supporting the Goals and Ideals of the Year of the Museum

SUPPORTING THE GOALS AND IDEALS OF THE YEAR OF THE MUSEUM -- (House of Representatives - February 08, 2006)

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 389 and join with my fellow colleagues in celebrating the more than 11,000 museums located in communities across this country.

Museums inspire us to dream, to examine the world around us and beyond, and to discover new and exciting things. Museums enable us, and especially our children, to explore everything from the smallest form to the infinite, from microscopic plants to the vast expanses of the universe.

Museums foster our most basic desire to understand what, where, when, why, and how. They also are a great educational resource that enrich our children's learning by complementing what they experience in school. Children learn best when inspired to think abstractly and creatively, and there is no better place outside of our schools for that to occur.

Museum staffs go to great lengths to consult State educational curricula and guidelines when designing exhibits, thereby further enhancing the quality and relevance of the museum experience. Each year, museums spend over $1 billion to create and stage educational exhibits and special programs.

Those of us here in Washington, D.C., are lucky enough to be close to the Smithsonian Institution, which is comprised of some of the best museums in the world. In the blocks between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, anybody with a desire to learn or explore can visit a tropical rain forest, step back to the time of the Civil War, see art from different cultures and periods, examine spacecraft that have been launched into space, touch a Moon rock, and learn about prehistoric animals.

So I rise in support of this bill because museums are an indispensable part of our education system and nurture our desire to discover what we do not yet know.

I live in a museum-rich environment. My congressional district has the Alder Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, the Chicago Center for Black Music Research Library, Chicago Children's Museum, the Chicago Historical Society, the Ernest Hemingway Museum, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, the Garfield Park Conservatory, the Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center, the Hull House Jane Addams Museum, the Illinois Labor History Society, the Museum of Broadcast Communications, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography, National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, the Peace Museum, the John G. Shedd Aquarium, the Spertus Museum, the Terra Museum of American Art, and the Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago.

So my colleagues can see, Mr. Speaker, there is no way that I could not be supportive of museums.

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