Michael,
Perhaps I was a little over-eager in my defence of the trade; as Jim has noted, and as you have said, there are a sadly significant number of museums where the staff neither know, nor care to know about their military artefacts and their care. Whether through personal, political or financial motivations, such institutions are unfortunately apt to drag through the mud the name of their entire trade. One such example is a museum of which I know (which shall remain nameless) in which one of the most senior staff is simply not interested in matters military, nor in the artefacts in their care relating to the subject, with the result that their military collections suffer both from a lack of variety in their display, and from an absence of staff specialising in the subject area.
Regrettably, this trend will probably not abate as the ever-growing tide of political correctness slowly covers the land, and the idea that even mentioning weaponry, or its use, no matter what the cause, will breed a generation of mass-murdering lunatic warmongers. However, I'm proud to say we here suffer no such delusions - though we do still suffer the omnipresent problems of time and resources, as per usual. Fun stuff!
Best regards,
Meredydd Jones
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