When people think of museums, they often picture art galleries or historical monuments housing treasure troves that capture a particular culture or time period. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and Paris’s art-crammed Musee d’Orsay are all iconic museums with awe-inspiring collections that lure visitors in droves year after year. Yet while these are a few of the most visited museums in the world, the vast majority of museums in the world do not get as much recognition or visitor traffic.
This is despite the fact that these museums serve a vital purpose in society and play an essential role in human cultural consciousness. In a world that is increasingly shaped by globalization, museums are taking on an even more important responsibility to act as repositories for diverse cultural heritage and to facilitate the understanding of different perspectives of history and culture.
Historically, museums have been defined as institutions that acquire, conserve, document, research, communicate and exhibit the primary tangible evidence of humanity’s cultural development for the benefit of society. This definition has been used to guide the work of museums, whether they are art, natural history, archaeological, anthropological, ethnographic, or science and technology museums. Museums are also characterized by their specialized knowledge in the fields in which they operate.
As museums evolve, however, the concept of the museum has come to encompass many other activities that are not directly related to the acquisition and exhibition of objects. For example, the field of museology has emerged to study the museum as an organization and how it operates in a variety of contexts. In addition, museums have developed a wide range of strategies to support the preservation and maintenance of their collections and to improve public access to them.
In light of this growing complexity, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has been working to develop a new definition of the museum. This definition will be adopted at the ICOM General Conference in Prague 2022 and will be used to guide museums in their work.
The new definition will challenge museums to cede institutional authority to their communities and shift their objective from transmitting expert knowledge to fostering dialogue and connection. This is a huge departure from the previous definition and it will take a great deal of time to implement.
The definition will also incorporate a commitment to the preservation and protection of the world’s cultural heritage in the face of threats including climate change, social disruption, health challenges, and illicit trade.