Plenary Session: The Museum Definition - The backbone of ICOM

Introduction (Suay Aksoy)

 ICOM’S 25th General Conference
 Jette Sandahl Chair of the Museum Definition, Prospects and Potentials Committee Standing Committee (MDPP)
 Suay Aksoy, President of ICOM
 4000 people discussing what a museum is.
 Role of museum in society is changing and they keep reinventing themselves in their quest for becoming more interactive, inclusive,
community oriented, accountable, and flexible (staying relevant)
 Primary missions are collecting, preservation, communication research, exhibition, learning, museums continue their practices to remain
close to communities.
 Museums as cultural hubs
 Transformation will have a profound impact on its audience. It will make us rethink the value of museums and question ethical boundaries
that define the nature of work of museum professionals.
 The growing emphasis on the social role of museums as underlined by the2015 UNESCO recommendation on the protection and promotion
of museums and collections their diversity and their role in society necessitates us to closely watch the societal trends as well as the
willingness and readiness to address contemporary societal issues which are very often contested and political in their nature.
 The UN Political Forum on Sustainable Development (2019) warns us about the two main issues by saying the impacts of climate change
and increasing inequality across and within countries are undermining progress on the sustainable development agenda threatening to
reverse many of the gains made over the last decades that have improved people’s lives.
 Climate change is not a political statement but a fact. Inequalities is the biggest challenge of our sector as it is to many others.
 Change as a global museum organization and proactively address these societal and therefore museological trends and challenges to reflect
contemporary issues on our work to remain relevant, revisiting core values, like ICOM ethics and definitions.

JETTE SANDAHL (yete sandal)

 Addressing Societal Responsibilities through Core Museum Functions and Methods
 Recommend collecting and developing new alternative museum definitions. Everyone was invited to send a proposal in their own language.
269 proposals were received from 69 countries in 25 different languages.
 Submitted 5 different alternative museum definitions. Edited hybrids combined from 269 proposals.
 Changing museum definition is a process of understanding the embeddedness of museum in society of contextualizing, historicizing, de
naturalizing the current definition and of developing a new ethical position that reflects the current challenges and obligations.
 The discussion anchors the future of museums and museum definition within a wider societal context. The future museums are shaped
amidst global concerns and conflicts over climate change and the destruction of nature over displacement and mass migration over wars,
and inequality.
 While there is a contradiction that has often been presumed between the social purposes and the collection-based museum functions
between community involvement and the role of experts, today, museums actively strive to fulfill their social and democratic purposes
through collecting, preserving, documenting, researching the collections and other evidence of cultural heritage.

RICHARD WEST JR. (President and CEO, Autry Museum of the American West)
 The Future of Life: Changing World Views, Changing Epistemologies
 A National Museum that takes the permanence and the authenticity the vitality and self-determination of the natives’ voices
 (1) For the purposes of interpretation, the native voice was to be treated as authentic and authoritative
 (2) Natives were living in contemporary and cultural communities with a future rather than merely historical or ethnographic remnants
 (3) All knowledge and knowledge creation do sit solely within the museum as the temple on the hill
 (4) Museums are civic space and forums for conversation and debate interacting with community audiences.
 A safe place for unsafe ideas and controversies
 “The great mystery walks beside you and walks beside you and touches all the good that you attempt.”

NIRMAL KISHANI (Associate Professor, National University of Singapore)

 Buildings consumed over 1/3 of world’s recourses. Major contributors of greenhouse gases.
 Mumbai, India (between the plant and unplanned settlements)
 6.25M people living in unplanned settlements (2005) and 9M in (2017)
 2/3 who live in the city live in a slum.
 Dharavi is the largest unplanned settlement in Mumbai and is the most crowded place on earth.
 200,000 homes, 40,000 commercial buildings, 30,000 vehicles ruined. 1,000 people died.
 750 green buildings despite having crowded cities.
 Building vs The Cities
 Humans having partnership with Nature (the roof has plants)
 In Korea the mayor took down 6 highways
 “The big critique of sustainability is its failure to describe what constitutes the good life.”
 The challenge is how fast we can build a consensus on how to get there.

Architects and planners are preoccupied by the past and the present they focus more on modernist/revisionary planning. Imagine a world where you
live in a place that is very different from where you existed?
If we can’t fix the city, we can’t fix the other problem. How do we reinvent the city/our homes where the in a way that gives nature the room to exist?

GEORGE OKELLO ABUNGU (CEO, Okello Abungu Heritage Consultants)

 Centuries of Untold Trauma: Decolonizing Museums, Bodies, Minds and Memories
 Museum, Museum definition as it relates to colonization.
 Heritage is not innocent of neutral. It’s full of power.
 Peace can only be found when we understand one another.
 We should reach one another and share our heritage.
 Some parts of the world have undergone immense injustices in human memory that etched scars.
 Colonialism is a crime against humanity.
 Came with the bibles and told them to close their eyes but when they opened their eyes the lands and their heritage were gone.
 Some museums continue to gain through illicit traffic.
 Conflict  Migration. A museum assists those arrivals.
 History remembers those who take risks and change.
 We have to do something, and it starts with how we define ourselves.

SHOSE KESSI (Associate Professor and Deputy Dean, Humanities Faculty, University of Cape Town)
 Toward a Decolonial Psychology: Defining and Confining Symbols of the Past
 Public art and the role of public art
 Even though the statue is gone, there is so much to change.
 Artworks, particularly those displayed in public spaces are live instruments and political statements that make claims justify, legitimize, and
propose ideas and engagements.
 An engagement with public art in participatory and collective forms of community action can lay the framework for restoring dignity and
well-being as part of a decolonial imperative to curate our own history.

MARGARET ANDERSON (Director, Old Treasury Bldg., Melbourne; Senior Historian)

 Communities, Empowerment and Participation: A Definition for the Future of Museums
 Museums are powerful storytellers of identity, cultures, environment.
 Inclusiveness
 Our communities continue to call on us to contribute to social justice, to acknowledge our own histories of dispossession and to contribute
positively to global concerns.

LAURAN BONILLA- MERCHAV (Professor, University of Costa Rica)

 The Proposed Museum Definition: A Roadmap for All
 Museums shape themselves around their limitations. Creativity is essential in adapting their mission to the boundaries of reality. Serves
their communities despite budget cuts.
 Museums can and must be part of the conversation about social controversies and pressing issues may it be small or big.
 (Alternative Definition) Museums are not for profit. Museums must enhance understanding of the world, aiming to contribute to human
dignity and social justice, global equality, and planetary wellbeing.
 (Current Definition) A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which
acquires, conserves, research, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity.
 Museums must be active and step in to offer all the goods.