Why does everything grand have to end up as a museum?

Earlier in the week Michael Shmith had a piece in the Age where he questioned the lack of public access to Government House in the Domain.  The essence of his article can be boiled down to the following points:

• The governor no longer occupies the important social role he once did (secondary point: it's not clear whether the offices of the state governors have any real purpose at all).
• The official residence is a perk, in which the governor exists in splendid isolation.
• It is a public building with fine gardens, therefore the public should have access to it.
• Rather than continue the existing merry-go-round of occasional open days, the best use of Government House is to turn it into a museum, like that good man Bob Carr did in NSW.

Normally I admire Michael Shmith's writing, and often enjoy his perspective.  But I really do disagree with his thinking about Government House.

Public buildings gain their power and their value by doing the things they were built to do.  The ways in which we do those things might change, and it is fair to expect that the building will change with them.  But when change is introduced in ways that run counter to the shape of the building, it meddles with how that building expresses its purpose.

Government House gains its power by the fact that it is a place where someone lives.  It is not clear what a museum in that space might contribute to our collective self-understanding.  To turn it into a some kind of function centre would be an entire debasement of a grand building.

Moreover, there are plenty of other museums in the area: you are only a short stroll from the National Gallery, the Treasury Building at the top of Collins St, the Immigration Museum in Flinders St, the National Observatory, the Pollywoodside, the Shrine of Remembrance, not to mention various libraries and so on.  You are in comfortable walking distance of practically every major museum and gallery in the inner-city.  What could a museum in the present Government House complex possibly achieve to complement these things?

Moreover, there are other places nearby that require opening up for public access far more urgently.  For instance, there are whole tracts of Flinders St Station which remain abandoned.  There are several buildings at that end of the city which could be turned into spaces that really benefited the public by being used to start renewing Swanston St in the block between Flinders and Collins Streets.

Perhaps there is another way of looking at the question.  What if the State Government were to decide that opening Government House on a more permanent basis is an important objective?  How could they do it without loosing the importance of it being a lived-in space?

My mind goes to some overseas examples.  Buckingham Palace remains active as a royal residence, and opens to the public regularly.  The same goes for Windsor Castle, St James's Palace, Edinburgh Castle, and Holyrood House.  One of the attractions about Buckingham Palace is that the Queen lives there.  You get to see behind the facade -- truly a privileged place for a mere tourist to penetrate.  One gladly waits in the queue, pays the entry price and tours the galleries because you are entering what remains fundamentally a lived-in space.  This is facilitated by the fact that the Royal Apartments are clearly separate from the main public areas of the Palace.

Perhaps this might be a better solution for opening Government House more frequently.  The governor's private apartments are separate from the state rooms, which are the areas of the house most people would be interested to see.

One final point.  Bob Carr's argument in favour of moving the governor of NSW out of the official residence was that the office had to be rescued from obscurity in the form of pomp and ceremony. It's an argument that doesn't really hold much water for me, because it's basically an ordinance of self-denial on a social scale.  One wonders if Carr would have put a stop to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace simply because we have CCTV and mobile phones now.  Pomp and ceremony is at least 50% of why we have governors at all.  Reducing the office to a well-dressed man or woman is really an admission that you struggle to see its relevance.

I wouldn't really be taking advice from Bob Carr, given the amount of water that's under the bridge from his time as Premier of NSW.  The problem with philosopher-kings was diagnosed by Plato: they think well but rule badly.