"Many of the statements made by museologists in published articles and at international conferences need to be interpreted with some skill, and with considerable knowledge of the countries in which these experts operate... [it] makes it difficult to make a public statement in simple, straightforward language. Museologists are all too likely to produce such unhelpful sentences as: 'The affectable changes in attitude and involvement by museum visitors, as a result of integrated museum experience, is observable withinthe museum environment' The urge to grade-up one's utterances by weaving in sociological jargon is difficult to resist, and the result is often a totally misleading impression of the person or institution concerned. No museum could be less pompous or academic than the Brooklyn Children's Museum in New York, yet a member of its staff found it possible to define a museum as 'a facility devoted to the preservation and promotion of the cultural arts and sciences through the use of specific resources that generally are not maintained in the course of daily events or used within the context of daily routine', phrases which do not suggest the lively, original Brooklyn Children's Museum at all."

"Glossary
The way in which members of the museum profession attempt to communicate... has been serious contaminated in recent years by the terminology which is current in the pseudo-sciences [Ed: Emphasis mine] of psychology and sociology...

Exhibits are no longer exhibits, but 'series of learning stations'; a modern curator does not try to make his collections interesting and intelligible, but 'plans a sequence of learning experiences'...

This kind of language will eventually, no doubt, work its way through the museum system and be flushed away to join the linguistic absurdities of previous generations...

It should be emphasised that, although this particular glossary includes only English terms, an equally long and discouraging list could be compiled in French, German, Russian or any other of the world's major languages...

Artefact or Artifact. Literally, 'skilfully made', but often used by those members of the museum world with little or no knowledge of Latin to signify any man-made object, however crude or primitive it may be.

Catalogue raisonné... An accepted English equivalent for this rather snobbish and off-putting term is badly needed.

Fine Art(s). A fundamentally absurd phrase... It means works of art which have only their beauty to recommend them. Fine Art items are essentially useless... But the definition is not foolproof, since one can never be absolutely sure that a Ming vase would not be used for umbrellas or a Rembrandt and its frame as a tea-tray.

Heritage. A much-used, trendy, emotion-loaded word of the 1970s. One wonders how previous generations got along without it.

Historical archaeologist. This very curious profession was invented in the United States and appears, as yet, to be little found outside that country. If one meets an historical archaeologist and asks him to define himself, the most frequent reply is that he is a person who has graduated in historical archaeology in order to qualify himself to work in that field, which does not help a great deal.

Visitation. A dreadful, totally illiterate American innovation, to be absolutely barred. The Visitation of the Holy Ghost to the Virgin Mary, or the visitation of a diocese by its bishop, is correct and in order. The visitation of museums, meaning the number and kinds of people who visit museums, is a nonsensical barbarism."

--- Museums for the 1980s : a survey of world trends, Kenneth Hudson (I'm quite sure he's British. Bah.)