Page:The museum, (Jackson, Marget Talbot, 1917).djvu/115

Rh it is necessary for the museum Director to remember that the function of the museum is to form a good setting for the objects in the collections and not to be in itself more interesting or more beautiful than its contents.

Tiled floors have been used rather freely in some of our museums, and in the National Museum in Munich the attempt has been made to have the floor representative of the period; thus, a room containing Roman remains is finished with a sort of terazzo. The room with Romanesque and Byzantine silver has a tiled floor. The Gothic room has also a tiled floor but the tiles are of a different pattern. In the Boston Museum the corridors in the main building are tiled, but the tiles have been laid in such a way that there are little grooves between each of them. This makes a roughness which not only hurts the feet but makes the wheeling of a truck both difficult and dangerous to the objects upon it. If tiles are used they should be laid flat and as smooth as possible. The advantages in a tiled floor are: 1. it is washable; 2. it is cheaper than marble; 3. it reflects the light very little; 4. it sheds the dust easily; 5. it is more easily repaired. The terazzo floor is liable to crack with changes of temperature or slight shifting of a building, and should be avoided. Concrete is the cheapest but