Key Concepts
of Museology
Key Concepts
of Museology
Edited by André Desvallées
and François Mairesse
With the assistance of the Musée Royal de Mariemont
www.musee-mariemont.be
And the assistance of the ICOM International Committee for Museology
Cover photos:
© 2009 Musée du Louvre / Angèle Dequier
© National Heritage Board, Singapore
© Auckland Museum
© Ningbo Museum
© Armand Colin, 2010
ISBN: 978-2-200-25398-1
5
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
François Mairesse, André Desvallées, Bernard Deloche, Serge
Chaumier, Martin Schärer, Raymond Montpetit, Yves Bergeron,
Noémie Drouguet, Jean Davallon
With the participation of:
Philippe Dubé, Nicole Gesché-Koning, André Gob, Bruno Brulon
Soares, Wan Chen Chang, Marilia Xavier Cury, Blondine Desbiolles,
Jan Dolak, Jennifer Harris, Francisca Hernandez Hernandez, Diana
Lima, Pedro Mendes, Lynn Maranda, Monica Risnicoff de Gorgas,
Anita Shah, Graciela Weisinger, Anna Leshchenko, all of whom have
contributed to the ICOFOM Symposium in 2009 on this subject or
have read through this document.
Translated from the French version by Suzanne Nash
7
FOREWORD
The development of professional standards is one of the core
objectives of ICOM, particularly in the area of advancement, sharing,
and communication of knowledge to the broad-ranging global museum
community, but also to those who develop policies in relation to its
work, to those responsible for managing the legal and social aspects
of its profession, and not least to those to whom it is directed and who
are expected to participate in and benefit from it. Launched in 1993,
under the supervision of André Desvallées, and with the collaboration
of François Mairesse from 2005 onwards, the Dictionary of Museology
is a monumental work resulting from many years of research,
interrogation, analysis, revision and debate by ICOM’s International
Committee for Museology (ICOFOM), which is particularly devoted
to the process of developing our comprehension of the practice and
theory of museums and the work that is undertaken within these
institutions daily.
The role, development and management of museums has changed
greatly in the last couple of decades. Museum institutions have become
steadily more visitor-focused and some of the larger museums are
veering more towards a corporate management model in their daily
operations. The museum profession and environment have therefore
inevitably evolved. Countries such as China have seen an unprecedented
increase in their museum presence, but there are equally important
museum developments occurring at the micro level, for example
in Small Island Developing States (SIDS). These exciting changes
8
lead to increasing discrepancies in museum job specifications and
training courses across different cultures. In this context, a reference
tool for museum professionals and students of museology is allthe-more
essential. Where the ICOM/UNESCO publication Running
a Museum: A Practical Handbook provided museum practitioners with
a basic handbook on current museum practice, the Encyclopaedia
Dictionarium should be regarded as a companion piece, providing a
complementary perspective on the theory of museums.
While the challenges of day-to-day work often overwhelm the
ability of the museum field to stop and think about its fundamental
philosophical bases, there is a growing need for functionaries at all
levels to rise to the challenge of bringing clarity and comprehension
to those who question the relevance of the museum to society and
its citizens. ICOFOM’s crucial work as encapsulated in the Encyclopaedic
Dictionary provides for a cogent, structured deconstruction
and distillation of the core precepts underpinning our work today.
Although the Dictionary presents a predominantly Francophone vision
of museology for reasons of linguistic coherence, the terminologies
synthesised herein are comprehended and/or utilised by museologists
in several different cultures. The publication, while not exhaustive,
synthesises decades of knowledge development in a systematic investigation
of both the epistemology and etymology of the museum and
offers an in-depth presentation of the primary concepts in Museology
today, with an elegantly pragmatic view of both the historical
redundancies and current contentions, which invest in the growth and
expansion of the profession. ICOFOM, the Dictionary’s editors and its
authors have consistently brought sensibility, perception, rigour and
balance to this task of ‘defining’ and explaining the institution and
the practice.
As an avant première of the complete Encyclopaedic Dictionary,
this brochure has been designed to give access to the widest public
possible, in the context both historical and current, for the derivation
and evolution of the various terms that litter the language today. In
the spirit of ICOM’s policy of embracing diversity and promoting
greater inclusion, ICOM anticipates that like the ICOM Code of Ethics
FOREWORD
9
for Museums, its publication will stimulate broad-based debate and
collaboration in its continued updating and revision, rather than being
left on the high shelf. ICOM’s 22nd
triennial General Conference,
in Shanghai, China is therefore a fitting début for this invaluable
reference tool in museology. Bringing together museum professionals
of all nationalities is precisely the type of platform that gives birth
to standards and reference tools such as these for current and future
generations.
Alissandra Cummins
President
International Council of Museums (ICOM)
FOREWORD
11
PREFACE
In accordance with the underlying principles of ICOM, the aim
of the International Committee for Museology (ICOFOM) since its
beginnings in 1977 has been to develop museology as a scientific and
academic discipline which will foster the development of museums
and the museum profession through research, study, and dissemination
of the main currents of museological thinking.
To this end a multidisciplinary working group was created to
make a critical analysis of museological terminology, focusing its
thinking on the fundamental concepts of museology. For nearly
twenty years the Thesaurus Working Group compiled remarkable
essays and summaries from its scientific research. Convinced of the
importance of providing the public with a catalogue of terms constituting
fundamental reference material, ICOFOM decided – with the
support of the International Council of Museums – to introduce this
publication at the ICOM General Conference to be held in Shanghai
in November 2010. The introductory brochure, a summary of each of
the twenty-one essays on a fundamental museological term, will be
presented as a ‘preview’ of the forthcoming Dictionary of Museology in
which these essays will be published in full, accompanied by a selective
dictionary describing close to 500 words mentioned in them.
I would like to emphasise that this brochure, an introduction to the
far more extensive work, does not pretend to be exhaustive but aims
to permit the reader to differentiate between the concepts that are
12
covered by each term, to discover new connotations and their links to
the entire museological field.
Dr. Vinos Sofka did not work in vain when, in the first years of
ICOFOM, he strove to turn this international committee into a forum
for reflection and debate on museological theory, able to reflect on
its own foundations. Thus the committee’s ongoing intellectual
production, which continues today, has been preserved through
the annual publication of the ICOFOM Study Series (ISS) which has
enriched the body of museological theory for over thirty years. The
international bibliography of all ICOFOM publications is unique and
represents a faithful picture of the evolution of museological thinking
throughout the world.
From reading the articles in this brochure we can understand the
need to reconsider the theoretical fundamentals of museology from
an integrating and pluralistic approach, founded in the conceptual
wealth of each word. The terms presented in this brochure are a
clear example of the work of a group of specialists who have been
able to understand and enhance the fundamental structure of the
language, our intangible heritage par excellence. The conceptual
reach of museological terminology allows us to appreciate the extent
to which theory and practice are inseparably linked. Wishing to go
beyond beaten paths, the authors introduced their own observations
wherever they needed to draw attention to a specific characteristic of
a term. They were not trying to build or rebuild bridges, but rather to
start from an examination of other more precise concepts and search
for new cultural meanings which enrich the theoretical foundations
of a discipline as vast as museology, destined to strengthen the role of
museums and their professionals worldwide.
In my position as Chair of ICOFOM it is a great honour and
pleasure to be present at the launch, through this brochure, of a work
that will soon be a landmark in the vast museological bibliography
produced by the members of ICOFOM from different countries and
disciplines, all united around one common ideal.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all who have
generously contributed their time and talents to bringing these
PREFACE
13
fundamental works to life: our friends and colleagues of whom we are
extremely proud:
– to ICOM, our guiding organisation, for having understood, thanks
to the responsiveness of its Director General, Mr. Julien Anfruns,
the importance of a project begun long ago and which can now be
completed thanks to his commitment,
– to André Desvallées, author of and driving force behind a project
which has gained unexpected and well-deserved importance,
– to François Mairesse, who began his trajectory within ICOFOM
in his youth, bringing his gifts as a productive writer and researcher,
and who, with André Desvallées, successfully coordinated the
actions of the Thesaurus Working Group and completed the editing
of this brochure and the Dictionary of Museology.
– to all the internationally renowned authors of the different articles,
museological experts in their respective disciplines,
– and finally to our three translators, whose work has also been scientific
in the translation of specialised terms from French when their
equivalent is not always obvious, either in English or in Spanish…
or in Chinese.
To all those who have contributed, each in their own way, to
fulfilling a dream that has become a reality, I would like to express my
most sincere gratitude.
Nelly Decarolis
Chair
ICOFOM
PREFACE
15
INTRODUCTION
What is a museum? How do we define a collection? What is an
institution? What does the term ‘heritage’ encompass? Museum
professionals have inevitably developed answers to questions such as
these, which are fundamental to their work, compiled according to
their knowledge and experience. Do we need to reconsider these? We
believe so. Museum work shifts back and forth between practice and
theory, with theory regularly being sacrificed to the thousand and one
daily tasks. The fact remains, however, that thought is a stimulating
exercise which is also fundamental for personal development and for
the development of the museum world.
The purpose of ICOM, on an international level, and of national
and regional museum associations more locally, is to develop standards
and improve the quality of the thinking that guides the museum world
and the services that it provides to society, through meetings between
professionals. More than thirty international committees work on this
collective think tank, each in its specific sector, producing remarkable
publications. But how can this wealth of thought on conservation, new
technologies, education, historical houses, management, professions,
and more, all fit together? More generally, how is what one might call
the museum field organised? These are the questions addressed by the
ICOM International Committee for Museology (ICOFOM) since its
foundation in 1977, in particular through its publications (ICOFOM
Study Series) which set out to inventory and synthesise the diversity of
opinions in museology. This is the context in which the plan to make
16
a compendium of basic concepts in museology, coordinated by André
Desvallées, was launched in 1992 by Martin R. Schärer, Chairman of
ICOFOM. He was joined eight years later by Norma Rusconi (who
sadly passed away in 2007), and by François Mairesse. Over the years
a consensus emerged that we should try to present, in some twenty
terms, a panorama of the varied landscape that the museum field
has to offer. This work has gathered momentum over the past few
years. Several preliminary versions of the articles were published (in
ICOFOM Study Series and in the review Publics & musées, which later
became Culture & musées). We propose here a summary of each of
these terms, presenting different aspects of each concept in condensed
form. These are addressed and further developed in the articles
of about ten to thirty pages each, along with a dictionary of about
400 terms, which will appear in the Dictionary of Museology now being
prepared for publication.
The project to compile the Dictionary is based on an international
vision of the museum, fuelled by many exchanges within ICOFOM.
The authors come from French-speaking countries, for reasons of
linguistic coherence: Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland. They
are Yves Bergeron, Serge Chaumier, Jean Davallon, Bernard Deloche,
André Desvallées, Noémie Drouguet, François Mairesse, Raymond
Montpetit and Martin R. Schärer. A first version of this work was
presented and discussed at length at the 32nd
symposium of ICOFOM
in Liège and Mariemont (Belgium) in 2009.
Two points are worthy of brief discussion at this point: the
composition of the editorial committee and the choice of the twentyone
terms.
The French-speaking museal world
in the ICOM dialogue
Why did we choose a committee with almost exclusively French
speakers? Many reasons explain this choice, most but not all of
them practical ones. We know that the idea of an international and
perfectly harmonious collective work is a utopian vision, when not
INTRODUCTION
17
everyone shares a common language (scientific or not). The international
committees of ICOM are well aware of this situation, which, to
avoid the risk of a Babel, leads them to favour one language – English
– today’s lingua franca. Naturally, the choice of the smallest common
denominator works to the benefit of those who master the language,
often to the detriment of many others less familiar with the tongue
of Shakespeare, who are forced to present their thoughts only in a
caricatured version. Using one of the three ICOM languages (English,
French and Spanish) was unavoidable, but which one? The nationality
of the first contributors, under the direction of André Desvallées
(who had worked for many years with Georges Henri Rivière, the first
Director of ICOM and the founder of French museology) quickly led
to the selection of French, but there were other arguments in its favour.
Most of the contributors can read if not all three, then at least two of
the ICOM languages, even though their command may be far from
perfect. We are familiar with the wealth of Anglo-American contributions
in the museum field, but we must point out that most of these
authors – with some notable exceptions, such as the emblematic figures
ofPatrickBoylanandPeterDavis,readneitherFrenchnorSpanish.The
choice of French in connection, we hope, with a fairly good knowledge
of foreign literature, allowed us to embrace, if not all contributions
in the museum field then at least some of its aspects, which are not
generally explored but which are very important for ICOM. We are,
however, aware of the limits of our research and hope that this work
will inspire other teams to present, in their own language (German or
Italian, for example), a different approach to the museum field.
On the other hand, the choice of a language has consequences
for the structuring of thought – as illustrated by a comparison of the
definition of the museum by ICOM in 1974 and in 2007, the first being
originally drafted in French, the second in English. We are aware
that this volume would not have been the same in Spanish, English or
German, both on the level of its structure and in its choice of terms,
but there would also have been a certain theoretical bias! It is not
surprising that most practical guides about museums are written
in English (such as the excellent manual edited by Patrick Boylan
INTRODUCTION
18
Running a Museum: A Practical Handbook1
), while they are much rarer
in France or in the old eastern European countries, which favour essay
writing and developing thought and theory.
It would nevertheless be too caricatural to divide museum
literature into a practical component, strictly Anglo-American, and a
theoretical component, closer to the Latin way of thinking: the number
of theoretical essays written by Anglo-Saxon thinkers in museum
literature completely contradicts this picture. The fact remains that
a number of differences exist, and differences are always enriching to
learn and to appreciate. We have tried to take this into consideration.
Finally it is important to pay tribute, through the choice of the
French language, to the fundamental theoretical work continued for
many years by the first two directors of ICOM, Georges Henri Rivière
and Hugues de Varine, without whom a large part of the museum
work in continental Europe and in the Americas and Africa could not
be understood. A fundamental reflection on the museum world cannot
overlook its history, just as it must keep in mind that its origins were
anchored in the Enlightenment and that its transformation (that is its
institutionalisation) occurred at the time of the French Revolution, but
also that the theoretical foundations were laid on the other side of the
Berlin wall during the 1960s when the world was still divided into two
antagonistic blocs. Although the geopolitical order was completely
overturned nearly a quarter of a century ago, it is important that
the museum sector should not forget its own history – this would be
absurd for an instrument that passes culture on to the public and to
future generations! However, there is still a risk of a very short memory
which retains from museum history only how to run such institutions
and how to attract visitors…
A constantly evolving structure
Right from the start it was not the authors’ aim to write a ‘definitive’
treatise about the museum world, an ideal theoretical system cut off
1. BOYLAN P. (coord.), Running a Museum: A Practical Handbook, Paris, ICOM/Unesco, 2004.
http//:unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001410/141067e.pdf (accessed: June 2010).
INTRODUCTION
19
from reality. The relatively modest formula of a list of twenty-one
terms was chosen to try to mark out a continuum of thought on the
museum field with only so many waymarks. The reader will not be
surprised to find here a number of familiar terms in common use,
such as museum, collection, heritage, public, but we hope he will
discover some meanings and aspects of these which are less familiar.
He may be surprised not to find certain other terms, such as ‘conservation’,
which is examined under ‘preservation’. We have not, however,
taken up all the developments that have been made by the members
of the International Committee for Conservation (ICOM-CC), whose
work extends far beyond our pretensions in this field. Other more
theoretical terms may seem somewhat exotic to museum practitioners
at first sight: museal, musealisation, museology, etc. Our aim was to
present the broadest view possible of what can be observed in the
museum world, including some common and some more unusual
practices likely to have a considerable impact on the future of museums
in the long term, for example the concept of virtual museums and
cyber museums.
Let us first set out the limits of this work: we are proposing a
theoretical and critical reflection on museum work in its broad sense,
which goes beyond traditional museums. We can of course begin with
museum and try to define it. In the ICOM definition of museum, it is an
institution at the service of society and its development. What do these
two fundamental terms mean? But above all – and museum definitions
do not immediately answer this question – why do museums exist? We
know that the museum world is linked to the concept of heritage, but it
is far larger than this. How can we suggest this wider context? By the
concept of museal (or the museal field), which is the theoretical field
dealing with these issues, in the same way that politics are the field of
political reflection, etc. The critical and theoretical examination of the
museal field is museology, whereas the practical aspect is museography.
For each one of these terms there are often not one but several
definitions which have altered over time. The different interpretations
of each of these terms are examined here.
INTRODUCTION
20
INTRODUCTION
The museum world has evolved a great deal over the years, both
in terms of its functions and through its materiality and the main
elements upon which its work is built. In practical terms, museums
work with objects which form their collections. The human element
is obviously fundamental to understanding the way museums work,
as much for the staff working within the museum – the professionals,
and their relation to ethics – as for the public for whom the museum
is intended. What are the functions of museums? They carry out
an activity that can be described as a process of musealisation and
visualisation. More generally, we speak of museal functions, which
have been described in different ways over time. We have based our
research on one of the best known models, crafted at the end of the
1980s by the Reinwardt Academie in Amsterdam, which recognises
three functions: preservation (which includes the acquisition, conservation
and management of collections), research and communication.
Communication itself includes education and exhibition, undoubtedly
the two most visible functions of museums. In this regard it seemed to
us that the educational function had grown sufficiently over the past
few decades for the term mediation to be added to it. One of the major
differences that struck us between earlier museum work and today is
the growth in the importance attached to notions of management, so
we thought that because of its specificities, it should be treated as a
museum function. The same is probably true for museum architecture,
which has also grown in importance to the point where it sometimes
upsets the balance between other museum functions.
How does one define a museum? By a conceptual approach
(museum, heritage, institution, society, ethics, museal), by theoretical
andpracticalconsiderations(museology,museography),byitsfunctions
(object, collection, musealisation), through its players (professionals,
public), or by the activities which ensue from it (preservation, research,
communication, education, exhibition, mediation, management,
architecture)? There are many possible points of view which have to
be compared to better understand the museum phenomenon, which is
rapidly developing, the recent evolutions of which cannot leave anyone
indifferent.
21
In the early 1980s the museum world experienced a wave of
unprecedented changes: having long been considered elitist and
unobtrusive, museums were now, as it were, coming out, flaunting a
taste for spectacular architecture, mounting large exhibitions that were
showy and hugely popular and intending to become part of a certain
style of consumerism. The popularity of museums has not failed since,
and they have doubled in number in the space of little more than a
generation, while astonishing new building projects spring up from
Shanghai to Abu Dhabi, at the dawn of the new geopolitical changes
promised in the future. One generation later the museum field is
still changing. Even if homo touristicus seems to have replaced the
visitor as the main target of museum marketing, we can still wonder
about their prospects and ask: is there still a future for museums as
we know them? Is the civilisation of material goods crystallised by
museums undergoing radical change? We cannot claim to answer
such questions here, but we hope that those who are interested in the
future of museums in general or, more practically, in the future of their
own institution, will find in these few pages some elements which may
enrich their thoughts.
François Mairesse and André Desvallées
INTRODUCTION
A
23
ARCHITECTURE
n.–Equivalent in French: architecture; Spanish:
arquitectura; German: Architektur; Italian:
architettura; Portuguese: arquitectura
(Brazil: arquitetura).
(Museum) architecture is defined as
the art of designing and installing
or building a space that will be used
to house specific museum functions,
more particularly the functions of
exhibition and display, preventive
and remedial active conservation,
study, management, and receiving
visitors.
Since the invention of the modern
museum, from the end of the 18th
century
and the beginning of the 19th
,
while old heritage buildings were
also being reconverted for museum
use, a specific architecture evolved
that was linked to the requirements of
preserving, researching and communicating
collections through permanent
or temporary exhibitions. This
architecture is evident in the earliest
museum buildings as much as in the
most contemporary ones. The architectural
vocabulary has itself influenced
the development of the idea of the
museum. Thus the form of the temple
with a cupola and columned portico
became established along with the
gallery, conceived as one of the main
models for fine arts museums, and
by extension gave rise to the names
gallery, galerie, galleria, and Galerie
in France, Italy and Germany and in
Anglo-American countries.
Although the form of museum
buildings was often focused on safeguarding
collections, it evolved as
new functions in museum work were
developed. So it was that after seeking
solutions for better lighting of
the exhibits (Soufflot, Brébion, 1778;
J.-B. Le Brun, 1787), for distributing
the collections better throughout the
museum building (Mechel, 1778-
1784), and for structuring the exhibition
space better (Leo von Klenze,
1816-1830), at the beginning of the
20th
century museum people realised
that the permanent exhibitions must
be reduced. To this end they created
storage areas, either by sacrificing
exhibition rooms or by creating space
in the basement, or by building new
structures. In addition, every effort
was made to make the setting for
the exhibits as neutral as possible –
even if this meant sacrificing all or
part of the existing historical décor.
The invention of electricity greatly
facilitated these improvements and
allowed the lighting systems to be
completely revised.
24
New functions that emerged in
the second half of the 20th
century
led to major architectural changes:
the increase in the number of temporary
exhibitions led to a different
distribution of collections between
the permanent exhibition and storage
spaces; the development of visitor
facilities, educational workshops
and rest areas, in particular the creation
of large multi-purpose spaces;
the development of bookshops, restaurants
and shops for selling items
relating to the exhibitions. But at the
same time, the decentralisation by
regrouping and by subcontracting
some museum operations required
the building or installation of specialised
autonomous buildings: firstly,
restoration workshops and laboratories
which could specialise while serving
several museums, then storage
areas located away from the exhibition
spaces.
The architect is the person who
designs and draws the plans for
the building and who directs its
construction. More broadly speaking,
the person who designs the
envelope around the collections,
the staff and the public. Seen from
this perspective, architecture affects
all the elements connected with the
space and light within the museum,
aspects which might seem to be of
secondary importance but which
prove to be determining factors for
the meaning of the display (arrangement
in chronological order, visibility
from all angles, neutral background,
etc.). Museum buildings are thus
designed and built according to an
architectural programme drawn up
by the scientific and administrative
heads of the establishment. However,
the decisions about definition of
the programme and the limits of the
architect’s intervention are not always
distributed in this way. Architecture,
as art or the method for building and
installing a museum, can be seen as
a complete oeuvre, one that integrates
the entire museum mechanism.
This approach, sometimes advocated
by architects, can only be envisaged
when the architectural programme
encompasses all the museographical
issues, which is often far from being
the case.
It can happen that the programmes
given to the architects include
the interior design, allowing the
latter – if no distinction is made
between the areas for general use
and those for museographical use
– to give free rein to their ‘creativity’,
sometimes to the detriment of
the museum. Some architects have
specialised in staging exhibitions
and have become stage designers or
exhibition designers. Those who can
call themselves ‘museographers’, or
specialists in museum practice are
rare, unless their practices include
this specific type of competence.
The present difficulties of museum
architecture lie in the conflict which
logically exists between, on the one
hand, the ambitions of the architect
(who will find himself in the spotlight
due to the international visibility
of this type of building today), and on
25
the other hand, the people connected
with the preservation and displaying
of the collections; finally, the comfort
of the different visitors must be taken
into account. This issue has already
been highlighted by the architect
Auguste Perret: “For a ship to float,
should it not be designed quite differently
from a locomotive? The specificity
of the museum building falls to
the architect, who will be inspired by
its function to create the organism.”
(Perret, 1931). A look at present day
architectural creations shows that,
even if most architects take the requirements
of the museum programme
into consideration, many continue to
favour the beautiful object over the
excellent tool.
DERIVATIVES: ARCHITECTURAL PROGRAMME.
CORRELATED: DÉCOR, EXHIBITION DESIGN,
INTERIOR DESIGNER, LIGHTING, MUSEOGRAPHIC
PROGRAMME, MUSEOGRAPHY.
26
C
COLLECTION
n. – Equivalent in French: collection; Spanish:
colección; German: Sammlung, Kollektion; Italian:
collezione, raccolta; Portuguese: colecçāo
(Brazil: coleçāo).
Generally speaking, a collection
may be defined as a set of material
or intangible objects (works, artefacts,
mentefacts, specimens, archive
documents, testimonies etc.) which
an individual or an establishment
has assembled, classified, selected,
and preserved in a safe setting and
usually displays to a smaller or larger
audience, according to whether the
collection is public or private.
To constitute a real collection,
these sets of objects must form a
(relatively) coherent and meaningful
whole. It is important to distinguish
between a collection and a fonds, an
archival term referring to a collection
from a single source, which differs
from a museum collection by its
organic nature, and indicates archival
documents of all kinds which have
been “automatically gathered, created
and/or accumulated and used by
a physical person or a family in its
activities or its functions.” (Bureau
of Canadian Archivists, 1992). In
the case of a fonds, unlike a museum
collection, there is no selection and
rarely any intention to build a coherent
whole.
Whether material or intangible,
a collection is at the heart of
the museum’s activities. “Museums
have a duty to acquire, preserve
and promote their collections as a
contribution to the safeguarding of
the natural, cultural and scientific
heritage” (ICOM Code of Ethics,
2006, article 2). Without saying as
much explicitly, ICOM’s definition
of a museum remains essentially tied
to this principle, confirming Louis
Réau’s long-standing opinion: “We
understand that museums are made
for collections and that they must be
built as it were from inside to outside,
shaping the container according
to the content” (Réau, 1908). This
concept no longer corresponds to
some models of museums which do
not own collections, or which have
collections that are not at the heart
of their scientific work. The concept
of collection is also one of those most
widely used in the museum world,
even if we have favoured the notion
of ‘museum object’, as will be seen
below. However, one can enumerate
three possible connotations of this
concept, which varies according to
two factors: on the one hand, the
27
institutional nature of the collection,
and on the other hand, the material
or intangible nature of the collection
media.
1. Frequent attempts have been
made to differentiate between a
museum collection and other types of
collectionbecausetheterm‘collection’
is so commonly used. Generally
speaking (since this is not the case
for every museum) the museum
collection – or the museum collections
– are both the source and
the purpose of the activities of the
museum perceived as an institution.
Collections can thus be defined as
“the collected objects of a museum,
acquired and preserved because of
their potential value as examples, as
reference material, or as objects of
aesthetic or educational importance”
(Burcaw, 1997). We can thus refer
to the museum phenomenon as the
institutionalisation of a private collection.
We must note, however, that
if the curator or the museum staff
are not collectors, collectors have
always had close ties with curators.
Museums should have an acquisition
policy – as emphasised by ICOM,
which also mentions a collection
policy – museums select, purchase,
assemble, receive. The French verb
collectionner is rarely used because it
is too closely linked to the actions of
the private collector and to its derivatives
(Baudrillard, 1968), that is to
say collectionism and accumulation,
known pejoratively as ‘collectionitis’.
From this perspective the collection
is seen as both the result and the
source of a scientific programme,
the purpose of which is acquisition
and research, beginning with the
material and the intangible evidence
of man and his environment. This
criterion, however, does not differentiate
between the museum and
the private collection, in so far as
the latter can be assembled with a
scientific objective, even though the
museum may acquire a private collection
which has been built with
very little intention to serve science.
This is when the institutional nature
of the museum dominates when
defining the term. According to Jean
Davallon, in a museum “the objects
are always parts of systems and categories”
(Davallon, 1992). Among
the systems relating to a collection,
besides the written inventory which
is a basic requirement of a museum
collection, it is just as essential to
adopt a classification system which
describes and can also rapidly find
any item among the thousands or
millions of objects (taxonomy, for
example, is the science of classifying
living organisms). Modern classification
systems have been greatly
influenced by information technology,
but documenting collections
remains an activity requiring specific
and rigorous knowledge, based
on building up a thesaurus of terms
describing the relations between the
different categories of objects.
2. The definition of collection can
also be viewed from a more general
perspective to include private collectors
and museums, but taking
28
its assumed materiality as a starting
point. Since this collection is made
of material objects – as was the case
very recently for the ICOM definition
of museums – the collection is
identified by the place where is located.
Krysztof Pomian defines the
collection as “any group of natural
or artificial objects that are held temporarily
or permanently outside the
circuit of economic activity, subject
to special protection in an enclosed
place designed for this purpose, and
displayed on view” (Pomian, 1987).
Pomian thus defines the collection
by its essentially symbolic value, in
so far as the object has lost its usefulness
or its value as an item for
exchange and has become a carrier
of meaning (“semiophore” or carrier
of significance). (see Object).
3. The recent development of
museums – in particular the recognition
of intangible heritage – has
emphasised the more general nature
of collections while also raising new
challenges. Intangible collections (traditional
knowledge, rituals and myths
in ethnology, ephemeral gestures and
performances in contemporary art)
have led to the development of new
systems for acquisition. The material
composition of objects alone sometimes
becomes secondary, and the
documentation of the collecting process
– which has always been important
in archaeology and ethnology
– now becomes the most important
information. This information is not
only part of research, but also part
of communicating to the public.
Museum collections have always
appeared relevant provided that they
are defined in relation to the accompanying
documentation, and also
by the work that results from them.
This evolution has led to a much
wider meaning of the collection as
a gathering of objects, each preserving
its individuality, and assembled
intentionally according to a specific
logic. This latter meaning, the most
open, includes toothpick collections
accumulated as well as traditional
museum collections, but also collections
of oral history, memories or
scientific experiments.
DERIVATIVES: COLLECT, COLLECTION, COLLECTOR,
COLLECTION MANAGEMENT.
CORRELATED: ACQUISITION, CATALOGUE,
CATALOGUING, CONSERVATION, DEACCESSION,
DOCUMENTATION, EXHIBIT, EXHIBITION, PRESERVATION,
RESEARCH, RESTORATION, RETURN, RESTITUTION, STUDY.
COMMUNICATION
n. – Equivalent in French: communication;
Spanish: comunicación; German: Kommunikation;
Italian: communicazione, Portuguese:
communicaçāo.
Communication (C) is the action
of conveying information between
one or several emitters (E) and one
or several receivers (R) through a
channel (the ECR model, Lasswell
1948). The concept is so general that
it is not limited to human processes
of bearing information of a semantic
nature, but is also encountered in
relation to machines and to animals
or social life (Wiener 1949). The
29
term has two usual connotations
which can be found to different
degrees in museums, according to
whether the phenomenon is reciprocal
(E↔C↔R) or not (E→C→R).
In the first case the communication
is called interactive, while in the
second it is unilateral and spread
out in time. When communication is
unilateral and operates in time, and
not just in space, it is called transmission
(Debray, 2000).
In the museum context communication
emerges both as the presentation
of the results of research
undertaken into the collections
(catalogues, articles, conferences,
exhibitions) and as the provision of
information about the objects in the
collections (the permanent exhibition
and the information connected
with it). This interpretation sees the
exhibition both as an integral part
of the research process and as an
element in a more general communication
system including for example,
scientific publications. This is
the rationale which prevailed in the
PRC (Preservation–Research–Communication)
system proposed by the
Reinwardt Academie in Amsterdam,
which includes under communication
the functions of exhibition,
publication, and education fulfilled
by the museum.
1. Application of the term ‘communication’
to museums is not
obvious, in spite of the use made of
it by ICOM in its definition of the
museum until 2007. This definition
states that a museum “acquires,
conserves, researches, communicates
and exhibits the tangible and intangible
heritage of humanity and its
environment for the purposes of education,
study and enjoyment.” Until
the second half of the 20th
century
the principle function of a museum
was to preserve amassed cultural
or natural treasures, and possibly
to display these, without explicitly
expressing any intention to communicate,
that is to convey a message
or information to a receiving public.
If in the 1990s, people were asking
themselves whether the museum
was really a medium (Davallon,
1992; Rasse, 1999) this was because
the museum’s communication function
did not appear obvious to everyone.
On the one hand, the idea of a
museum message appeared only relatively
late, with thematic exhibitions
that were principally aimed at education;
on the other hand, the receiving
public remained a great unknown
for a long time, and it is only quite
recently that museum visitor studies
and visitor surveys have developed.
Seen from the perspective favoured
in the ICOM definition of museums,
museum communication would
appear to be the sharing, with different
publics, of the objects in the collection
and the information resulting
from research into them.
2. We can define the specificity
of communication as practised by
museums in two points: (1) it is most
often unilateral, that is, without the
possibility of reply from the receiving
public, whose extreme passivity
was rightly emphasised by McLuhan
and Parker (1969, 2008). This does
30
not mean that the visitor is not personally
involved (whether interactively
or not) in this type of communication
(Hooper-Greenhill, 1991); (2) it is not
essentially verbal, nor can it really be
compared with reading a text (Davallon,
1992), but it works through the
sensory presentation of the objects
exhibited: “The museum as a communication
system, then, depends
on the non-verbal language of the
objects and observable phenomena.
It is primarily a visual language, and
at times an aural or tactile language.
So intense is its communicative power
that ethical responsibility in its use
must be a primary concern of the
museum worker” (Cameron, 1968).
3. More generally speaking, communication
gradually became the
driving force of museum operations
towards the end of the 20th
century.
This means that museums communicate
in a specific way (using their own
methods), but also by using all other
communication techniques, possibly
at the risk of investing less in what
is most central to their work. Many
museums – the largest ones – have
a public relations department, or a
“public programmes department”,
which develops activities aimed at
communicating to and reaching
various sectors of the public that are
more or less targeted, and involving
them through traditional or innovative
activities (events, gatherings,
publications, extramural activities,
etc.), In this context the very large
sums invested by museums in their
internet sites are a significant part of
the museum’s communication logic.
Consequences include the many digital
exhibitions or cyber-exhibitions
(a field in which a museum may have
genuine expertise), on-line catalogues,
more or less sophisticated
discussion forums, and forays into
social networks (YouTube, Twitter,
Facebook, etc.).
4. The discussion regarding the
communication methods used by the
museum raises the question of transmission.
The chronic lack of interactivity
in museum communication has
led us to ask ourselves how we can
make the visitor more active, while
seeking his participation (McLuhan
and Parker 1969, 2008). We could,
of course, remove the labels or even
the story line so that the public could
build their own rationale as they
move through the exhibition, but
this would not make the communication
interactive. The only places
where a degree of interactivity has
been developed (such as the Palais de
la Découverte, the Cité des sciences et
de l’industrie in Paris, or the Exploratorium
in San Francisco) seem closer
to amusement parks that develop
fun attractions. It appears nevertheless
that the real task of the museum
is closer to transmission, understood
as unilateral communication over
time so that each person can assimilate
the cultural knowledge which
confirms his humanity and places
him in society.
CORRELATED: CULTURAL ACTION, EXHIBITION,
EDUCATION, DISSEMINATION, INTERPRETATION, MEDIA,
MEDIATION, TRANSMISSION, PUBLIC AWARENESS, PUBLIC
RELATIONS.
31
EDUCATION
n. (Latin: educatio, educere, to guide, to lead
out of) – Equivalent in French: éducation; Spanish:
educación; German: Erziehung, Museumspädagogik;
Italian: istruzione; Portuguese:
educaçāo.
Generallyspeaking,educationmeans
the training and development of
human beings and their capacities by
implementing the appropriate means
to do so. Museum education can be
defined as a set of values, concepts,
knowledge and practices aimed at
ensuring the visitor’s development;
it is a process of acculturation which
relies on pedagogical methods, development,
fulfilment, and the acquisition
of new knowledge.
1. The concept education should be
defined in relation to other terms, the
first of these being instruction, which
“concerns the mind and is understood
as knowledge acquired by which
one becomes skilful and learned”
(Toraille, 1985). Education relates
to both the heart and the mind, and
is understood as knowledge which
one aims to update in a relationship
which sets knowledge in motion to
develop understanding and individual
reinvestment. Education is the
action of developing moral, physical,
intellectual and scientific values, and
knowledge. Knowledge, know-how,
being and knowing how to be are four
major components in the educational
field. The term education comes
from the Latin “educere”, to lead out
of (i.e. out of childhood) which assumes
a dimension of active accompaniment
in the transmission process.
It is connected with the notion of
awakening, which aims to arouse
curiosity, to lead to questioning and
develop the capacity to think. The
purpose of informal education is thus
to develop the senses and awareness;
it is a development process which presupposes
change and transformation
rather than conditioning and inculcation,
notions it tends to oppose.
The shaping of it therefore happens
via instruction which conveys useful
knowledge, and education which
makes this knowledge transformable
and able to be reinvested by the individual
to further the process of his
becoming a human being.
2. In a more specifically museum
context, education is the mobilisation
of knowledge stemming from
the museum and aimed at the development
and the fulfilment of individuals,
through the assimilation of
this knowledge, the development of
newsensitivitiesandtherealisationof
new experiences. “Museum pedagogy
E
32
is a theoretical and methodological
framework at the service of educational
activities in a museum environment,
activities the main purpose of
which is to impart knowledge (information,
skills and attitudes) to the
visitor” (Allard and Boucher, 1998).
Learning is defined as “an act of perception,
interaction and assimilation
of an object by an individual”, which
leads to an “acquisition of knowledge
or the development of skills or attitudes”
(Allard and Boucher, 1998).
Learning relates to the individual
way in which a visitor assimilates the
subject. With regard to the science of
education or intellectual training, if
pedagogy refers more to childhood
and is part of upbringing, the notion
of didactic is considered as the theory
of dissemination of knowledge, the
way to present knowledge to an
individual whatever his or her age.
Education is wider, and aims at the
autonomy of the individual.
We can mention other related
concepts which shade and enrich
these different approaches. The
concepts of museum activities or
cultural action, like that of interpretation
or mediation, are often invoked
to describe the work carried out with
the public in the museum’s efforts
at transmission. “I am teaching you”
says a teacher, “I am allowing you to
know” says a mediator (Caillet and
Lehalle, 1995) (see Mediation). This
distinction aims to reflect the difference
between the act of training,
and a process of awareness appealing
to an individual who will finish
the work according to the extent
to which he assimilates the content
before him. Training assumes
constraint and obligation, whereas
the museum context supposes freedom
(Schouten, 1987). In Germany
the term pedagogy, or Pädagogik is
used more frequently, and of the
word used to describe education
within museums is Museumspädagogik.
This refers to all the activities
that a museum may offer, regardless
of the age, education or social background
of the public concerned.
DERIVATIVES: ADULT EDUCATION, EDUCATIONAL
SCIENCES, EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, LIFE-LONG
EDUCATION, INFORMAL OR NON-FORMAL EDUCATION,
MID-CAREER EDUCATION, MUSEUM EDUCATION, POPULAR
EDUCATION.
CORRELATED: AWAKENING, CULTURAL ACTION,
CULTURAL ACTIVITIES, DEVELOPMENT, DIDACTIC,
INTERNSHIP, INSTRUCTION, MEDIATION, PEDAGOGY,
TEACHING, TRAINING, TRANSMISSION, UPBRINGING.
ETHICS
n. (From the Greek ethos: customs, character)
– Equivalent French: éthique; Spanish:
etica; German: Ethik; Italian: ethica; Portuguese:
ética.
Generally speaking, ethics are a philosophical
discipline in philosophy
that deals with identifying values
which will guide both private and
public human conduct. Far from
being a simple synonym of morality,
as is currently believed, ethics is the
opposite in so far as the choice of
values is not imposed by a specific
set of rules, but rather freely chosen
by the individual taking action. This
33
distinction is essential because of its
consequences for museums, since
the museum is an institution, that is
to say a phenomenon which exists by
common agreement and which can
be altered.
Within the museum, ethics can
be defined as the discussion process
aimed at identifying the basic values
and principles on which the work of
the museum relies. Ethics lead to the
drawing up of principles set out in
museums’ codes of ethics, of which
the ICOM code is one example.
1. Ethics are aimed at guiding a
museum’s conduct. In a moral vision
of the world, reality is subject to a
moral order which determines the
place occupied by each person. This
orderconstitutesaperfectiontowards
which each being must strive by fulfilling
his function perfectly, and this
is known as virtue (Plato, Cicero,
etc.). By contrast, the ethical vision of
the world is based on a chaotic and
disorganised world, left to chance
and without any fixed bearings.
Faced with this universal disorder,
individuals are the only judge of what
is best for them (Nietzsche, Deleuze);
they alone must decide for themselves
what is good or bad. Between
these two radical positions that are
moral order and ethical disorder, a
middle road is conceivable in so far
as it is possible for people to agree
freely among themselves to recognise
common values (such as the principle
of respect for human beings). Again
this is an ethical point of view which
on the whole governs the way modern
democracies determine values. This
fundamental distinction still influences
the division between two types
of museums or two ways of operating
even today. Some very traditional
museums such as fine arts museums
seem to follow a pre-established
order: their collections appear to
be sacred and define a model of
conduct by different actors (curators
and visitors), and a crusading spirit
in the way they carry out their tasks.
On the other hand, some museums,
perhaps more attentive to the practical
reality of people’s lives, do not
consider themselves subject to absolute
values and continuously reassess
them. These may be museums
more in touch with real life, such
as anthropology museums, striving
to grasp an ethnic reality which is
often fluctuating, or so-called “social
museums” for which questions and
practical choices (political or social)
are more important than the religion
of collections.
2. While the distinction between
ethical and moral is quite clear in
French and Spanish, the term in
English is more open to confusion
(éthique in French can be translated
as ethic or also as moral in
English). Thus the English version
of the ICOM Code of Ethics (2006)
in appears in French as Code de
déontologie (Código de deontología
in Spanish). The vision expressed in
the code is, however clearly prescriptive
and normative (and very similar
to that expressed in the codes of the
UK Museums Association and the
34
American Association of Museums).
It is laid out in eight chapters which
identify basic measures to allow the
(supposedly) harmonious development
of the museum institution
within society: (1) Museums take
care of the protection, documentation
and promotion of the natural
and cultural heritage of humanity
(institutional, physical and financial
resources needed to open a museum).
(2) Museums which maintain collections
hold them in trust for the benefit
of society and its development
(issues of acquisition and deaccession
of collections). (3) Museums hold primary
evidence for building up and
furthering knowledge (deontology of
research or of collecting evidence).
(4) Museums provide opportunities
for the appreciation, understanding
and management of the natural and
cultural heritage (deontology of exhibiting).
(5) Museums hold resources
that provide opportunities for other
services and benefits to the public
(issues of expertise). (6) Museums
work in close collaboration with
the communities from which their
collections originate as well as with
those that they serve (issues of cultural
property). (7) Museums operate
in a legal manner (respect for the
rule of law). (8) Museums operate in
a professional manner (professional
conduct and conflicts of interest).
3. The third impact on museums
of the concept of ethics is its contribution
to the definition of museology
as museal ethics. From this perspective,
museology is not a science
in development (as proposed by
Stránský), because the study of the
birth and the evolution of museums
does not follow the methods of both
human and natural sciences in so far
as it is an institution that is malleable
and can be reshaped. However,
as a tool of social life, museums
demand that endless choices are
made to determine the use to which
they will be put. And precisely here,
the choice of the ends to which this
body of methods may be subjected
is none other than a choice of ethics.
In this sense museology can be defined
as museal ethics, because it is
ethics which decide what a museum
should be and the ends to which it
should be used. This is the ethical
context in which it was possible for
ICOM to build a deontological code
for the management of museums,
a deontology which constitutes a
code of ethics common to a socioprofessional
category and serving it
as a paralegal framework.
CORRELATED: MORAL, VALUES, DEONTOLOGY.
EXHIBITION
n. (early 15c., from O.Fr. exhibicion, from
Latin exhibitionem, nom. exhibitio, from exhibere
‘to show, display,’ lit. ‘to hold out,’ from
ex- ‘out’ and habere ‘to hold’) – Equivalent
French: (from the Latin expositio, gen. espoitionis:
exposé, explication) exposition; Spanish:
exposición; German: Austellung; Italian:
esposizione, mostra; Portuguese: exposição,
exhibição.
The term ‘exhibition’ refers to
the result of the action of displaying
35
something, as well as the whole of
that which is displayed, and the place
where it is displayed. “Let us consider
a definition of the exhibition
borrowed from outside and not drafted
by ourselves. This term – along
with its abbreviated term ‘exhibit’ –
means the act of displaying things to
the public, the objects displayed (the
exhibits), and the area where this display
takes place” (Davallon, 1986).
Borrowed from the Latin expositio,
the French term exposition (in old
French exposicïun, at the beginning
of the 12th
century) first had at the
same time the figurative meaning of
an explanation, an exposé, the literal
meaning of an exposition (of an
abandoned child, still used in Spanish
in the term expósito), and the
general meaning of display. From
there (in the 16th
century) the French
word exposition had the meaning
of presenting (merchandise), then
(in the 17th
century) it could mean
abandonment, initial presentation
(to explain a work) or situation (of
a building). In 18th
century France
the word exhibition, as a display of
art works, had the same meaning in
French as in English, but the French
use of the word exhibition to refer to
the presentation of art later gave way
to exposition. On the other hand, the
word exposition in English means
(1) the setting forth of a meaning or
intent, or (2) a trade show, thus preserving
the earlier meanings of the
French. Today both the French exposition
and the English exhibition have
the same meaning, which applies to
the setting out of exhibits of all kinds
in a space for public viewing; also the
exhibits themselves, and the space in
which the show takes place. From
this viewpoint, each of these meanings
defines somewhat different
elements.
1. The exhibition, understood as
the container or the place where the
contents are on display (just as the
museum appears both as a function
and as a building) is characterised
not by the architecture of this space
but by the place itself. Even though
the exhibition appears to be one of
the characteristics of museums, exhibition
thus has a far broader reach
because it can also be set up by a
profit-making organisation (market,
store, art gallery). It can be organised
in an enclosed space, but also in the
open air (in a park or a street) or in
situ, that is to say without moving the
objects from their original sites natural,
historical or archaeological sites.
Seen from this perspective exhibition
areas are defined not only by the
container and the contents but also
by the users – visitors and museum
professionals – that is to say the people
who enter this specific area and
share in the general experience of the
other visitors at the exhibition. The
place of the exhibition is thus a specific
place of social interaction, the
effects of which can be assessed. Evidence
of this is provided by the development
of visitor studies, and the
growth of a specific field of research
connected with the communication
aspect of the place and with all the
36
interactions specific to this place, or
to all the images and ideas that this
place might evoke.
2. As a result of the act of displaying,
exhibitions are seen today
as one of the main functions of the
museum which, according to the
latest definition by ICOM, “acquires,
conserves, researches, communicates
and exhibits the tangible and intangible
heritage of humanity…” According
to the PRC model (Reinwardt
Academie), exhibition is part of the
museum’s more general function of
communication, which also includes
policies for education and publication.
From this point of view exhibitions
are a fundamental feature
of museums, in so far as these prove
themselves to be excellent places for
sensory perception, by presenting
objects to view (that is, visualisation),
monstration (the act of demonstrating
proof), ostention (initially the
holding up of sacred objects for adoration).
The visitor is in the presence
of concrete elements which can be
displayed for their own importance
(pictures, relics), or to evoke concepts
or mental constructs (transubstantiation,
exoticism). If museums can be
defined as places of musealisation
and visualisation, exhibitions then
appear as the “explanatory visualisation
of absent facts through objects,
and methods used to display these,
used as signs” (Schärer, 2003). Showcases
and picture rails are artifices
which serve to separate the real
world and the imaginary world of
museums. They serve no other role
than to mark objectivity, to guarantee
distance (creating a distancing,
as Bertolt Brecht said of the theatre)
and let us know that we are in another
world, a world of the artificial,
of the imaginary.
3. Exhibitions, when they are
understood as the entirety of the
objects displayed, include musealia,
museum objects or “real things”,
along with substitutes (casts, copies,
photos, etc.), display material (display
tools, such as show cases, partitions
or screens), and information tools
(such as texts, films or other multimedia),
and utilitarian signage. From
this perspective the exhibition works
as a specific communication system
(McLuhan and Parker, 1969; Cameron,
1968) based on “real things”
and accompanied by other artefacts
which allow the visitor to better identify
their significance. In this context,
each of the elements present in the
exhibition (museum objects, substitutes,
texts, etc.) can be defined as an
exhibit. In such a situation it is not a
question of rebuilding reality, which
cannot be relocated in the museum
(a “real thing” in a museum is already
a substitute for reality and an exhibition
can only offer images which
are analogous with that reality). The
exhibition communicates reality
through this mechanism. Exhibits in
an exhibition work as signs (semiotics),
and the exhibition is presented
as a communication process which
is most often unilateral, incomplete
and interpretable in ways that are
often very different. The term exhi-
37
bition as used here differs from that
of presentation, in so far as the first
term corresponds, if not to a discourse,
physical and didactic, then at
least to a large complex of items that
have been put on view, whereas the
second evokes the showing of goods
in a market or department store,
which could be passive, even if in
both cases a specialist (display designer,
exhibition designer) is needed
to reach the desired level of quality.
These two levels – presentation and
exhibition – explain the difference
between exhibition design and exhibit
display. In the first case the designer
starts with the space and uses
the exhibits to furnish the space,
while in the second he starts with
the exhibits and strives to find the
best way to express them, the best
language to make the exhibits speak.
These differences of expression have
varied during different periods,
according to tastes and styles, and
according to the relative importance
of the people installing the space
(decorators, exhibition designers,
display designers, stage designers),
but the modes of exhibition also vary
according to the disciplines and the
objective of the show. The answers
to the questions regarding “to show”
and “to communicate” cover a vast
field allowing us to sketch the history
and typology of exhibitions.
We can imagine the media that were
used (objects, texts, moving images,
environments, digital information
technology, mono-media and multimedia
exhibitions); according to
whether or not the exhibition was
of a profit-making nature (research
exhibition, blockbuster, stage show
exhibition, commercial exhibition),
and according to the general concept
of the museographer (exhibit design
for the object, for the point of view or
approach, etc.). And we note that the
seeing visitor has become more and
more involved in this great range of
possibilities.
4. The French words exposition
and exhibition differ, in so far as
exhibition now has a pejorative meaning.
Towards 1760 the word exhibition
could be used in French and
in English to indicate an exhibition
of paintings, but the meaning of the
word has been degraded in French to
indicate activities that are clearly for
show (sport exhibitions), or indecent
in the eyes of the society where the
exhibition takes place. This is the
case for the derivatives exhibitionist
and exhibitionism in English, which
refer even more specifically to indecent
acts. Criticism of exhibitions
is often the most virulent when it
takes the approach that the exhibition
is not what it should be – and by
association, what a museum should
do – but has become a hawker show,
far too commercial, or offensive to
the public.
5. The development of new technologies
and computer-aided design
have popularised the creation of
museums on the internet with exhibitions
that can only be visited on
screen or via digital media. Rather
than using the term virtual exhibi-
38
tion (the exact meaning of which
would be a possible exhibition, that
is to say a potential reply to the question
of “showing”), we prefer the
terms digital or cyber exhibition to
refer to these particular exhibitions
seen on the internet. They open up
possibilities (collecting objects, new
ways of display, analysis, etc) that
traditional exhibitions of material
objects do not always have. While
for the time being they are hardly
competition for exhibitions of real
objects in traditional museums, it
is not impossible that their development
will affect the methods currently
used by museums.
DERIVATIVES: AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITION,
COMMERCIAL EXHIBITION, CYBER EXHIBITION, EXHIBIT,
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE, EXHIBITION CURATOR, EXHIBITION
DESIGN, EXHIBITION DESIGNER, EXHIBITION GALLERIES,
EXHIBITION PRACTICE, EXHIBITION SCENARIO, EXHIBITION
STUDIES, EXHIBITOR, IN SITU EXHIBITION, INTERNATIONAL
EXHIBITION, NATIONAL EXHIBITION, OPEN AIR EXHIBITION,
PERMANENT EXHIBITION (A LONG OR SHORT TERM
EXHIBITION), TEMPORARY EXHIBITION, TRAVELLING
EXHIBITION, TO EXHIBIT, UNIVERSAL EXHIBITION.
CORRELATED: COMMUNICATION, DECORATOR,
DEMONSTRATION, DIDACTIC OBJECT, DIORAMA, DISPLAY,
DISPLAY TOOL, EXPOSITION, FAIR, FICTIONAL REALITY,
GALLERY, HANGING, INSTALLATION, INSTALLING SPACE,
MEANS, MECHANISM, MEDIA, MESSAGE, METAPHOR,
MONSTRATION, OPENING, OSTENTION, PICTURE RAIL,
POSTING, PRESENTATION, PROJECT MANAGER, REALITY,
REPRESENTATION, STAGE SETTING, SHOW, SHOWCASE,
SOCIAL SPACE, SPACE, STAGE DESIGN, VISUALISATION.
39
HERITAGE
n. – Equivalent in French: patrimoine; Spanish:
patrimonio; German: Natur- und Kulturerbe;
Italian: patrimonio; Portuguese: patrimônio.
The notion of heritage (patrimonium)
in Roman law referred to all the
assets received by succession, assets
which, according to law, are inherited
by children from fathers and
mothers; family assets, as opposed
to assets acquired since marriage. By
analogy, two metaphorical uses were
born later. (1) Recently the expression
‘genetic heritage’ to describe the
hereditary features of a living being;
(2) earlier the concept of ‘cultural
heritage’ seems to have appeared
in the 17th
century (Leibniz, 1690)
before being taken up again by
the French Revolution (Puthod de
Maisonrouge, 1790); Boissy d’Anglas,
1794). The term, however, has
many more or less broad meanings.
Because of its etymology, the term
and the notion that it infers have
spread more widely in Romance
languages since the 1930s (Desvallées,
1995) than in the Anglo-Saxon
world, which favoured the term property
(goods) before adopting the
term heritage in around the 1950s,
while differentiating it from legacy.
In the same way the Italian government,
while one of the first to recognise
the term patrimonio, continued
to use the expression beni culturali
(cultural goods). The idea of heritage
is inevitably tied to that of potential
loss or disappearance – as was the
case after the French Revolution –
and at the same time to the will to
preserve these goods. “Heritage can
be recognised by the fact that its loss
means a sacrifice and that its conservation
also presupposes sacrifices”
(Babelon et Chastel, 1980).
1. Starting with the French Revolution
and throughout the 19th
century,
heritage essentially referred to
immovable property and was generally
confused with the idea of historical
monuments. A monument, in
the original sense of the word, is a
construction intended to perpetuate
the memory of somebody or some
thing. Aloÿs Riegl identified three
categories of monuments: those
that were conceived intentionally
“to commemorate a specific time or
a complex event in the past” (intentional
monuments), “those chosen
by subjective preferences” (historical
monuments), and finally “all the
creations of mankind, independent
of their significance or their original
intent” (ancient monuments)
(Riegl, 1903). According to the prin-
H
40
ciples of history, history of art, and
archaeology, the last two categories
essentially belong to the category
of immovable heritage. Until
very recently the Directorate of the
Heritage of France, whose principle
purpose was the preservation of
historical monuments, was separate
from the Directorate of the Museums
of France (French Museums Board).
Today it is not unusual to find people
supporting this differentiation,
which is at the very least strict. Even
when expanded worldwide under
the aegis of UNESCO, the idea that
is fostered especially by ICOMOS,
the equivalent of ICOM for historical
monuments, is first of all based
essentially on monuments and on
groups of monuments and sites.
Thus the Convention on the World
Cultural Heritage stipulates: “For
the purposes of this Convention, the
following shall be considered cultural
heritage: – monuments: architectural
works, works of monumental
sculpture and painting, […] – groups
of buildings: groups of separate or
connected buildings, […] because of
their architecture, […] – sites: works
of man or the combined works of
nature and man, […]. For the purposes
of this Convention the following
shall be considered natural heritage:
natural features, […] – geological
and physiographical formations
[…] – natural sites or natural areas.”
(UNESCO 1972).
2. From the mid 1950s, the notion
of heritage gradually incorporated
all material evidence of man and his
environment and became considerably
wider. Thus folklore heritage,
scientific heritage and then industrial
heritage were gradually integrated
into the concept of heritage. The definition
of heritage in French-speaking
Québec also followed this general
tendency: “May be considered heritage
all objects or groups of objects,
material or intangible, that are collectively
recognised or appropriated
for their value as evidence and historical
memory and which merit being
protected, preserved, and enhanced”
(Arpin, 2000). This concept refers to
all natural or man-made goods and
values, whether material or intangible,
without restriction of time or
space, whether they be simply inherited
from the forbears of earlier generations
or gathered and preserved to
be transmitted to the descendants
of future generations. Heritage is a
public good; its preservation must
be assumed by the community when
individuals fail to do so. Individual
local natural and cultural characteristics
contribute to the conception
and building of the universal character
of heritage. The concept of
heritage differs from the concept of
inheritance with regard to time and
events: whereas inheritance is identified
immediately after a death or
when there is a transferral of goods
from one generation to another, heritage
defines all the goods received or
gathered and safeguarded by earlier
generations that will be transmitted
to their descendants. To a certain
extent, heritage can be a line of inhe-
ritances.
41
3.Forsomeyearsthenotionofheritage,
essentially defined on the basis
of a western concept of transmission,
hasfelttheimpactoftheglobalisation
of ideas, such as the relatively recent
concept of intangible heritage. This
concept, of Asian origin (in particular
from Japan and Korea) is founded
on the idea that transmission, to be
effective, must essentially be done by
human carriers, from whence evolved
the idea of living human treasures:
“Living human treasure refers
to a person who excels above others
in performing music, dance, games,
plays and rituals which are of outstanding
artistic and historical value
in their respective countries as envisaged
in the Recommendation on the
Safeguarding of Traditional Cultures
and Folklore” (UNESCO, 1993).
This principle was accepted internationally
and endorsed in the 2003
Convention for the Safeguarding of
the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
“The intangible cultural heritage
means the practices, representations,
expressions, knowledge, skills – as
well as the instruments, objects,
artefacts and cultural spaces associated
therewith – that communities,
groups and, in some cases, individuals
recognize as part of their cultural
heritage. This intangible cultural
heritage,transmittedfromgeneration
to generation, is constantly recreated
by communities and groups in response
to their environment, their
interaction with nature and their history,
and provides them with a sense
of identity and continuity, thus promoting
respect for cultural diversity
and human creativity. For the purposes
of this Convention, consideration
will be given solely to such intangible
cultural heritage as is compatible
with existing international human
rights instruments, as well as with
the requirements of mutual respect
among communities, groups and
individuals, and of sustainable development.”
(UNESCO, 2003).
4. Heritage covers a field that has
become increasingly complex, and in
the past few years the uncertainties
of its transmission have led to more
focused thinking on the mechanisms
of building and extending heritage:
what exactly is the process of heritage
building? Much contemporary
research analyses the institution of
heritage building beyond the empirical
approach, seeing it as the result of
strategies and interventions focused
on marking and signals (framing).
Thus the idea of heritage building is
necessary to understand the position
in society that heritage represents,
rather as others speak of the idea of
“artification” (Shapiro, 2004) with
regard to works of art. “Heritage is a
cultural process or performance that
is concerned with the types of production
and the negotiation of cultural
identity, individual and collective
memory, and social and cultural
values” (Smith, 2007). If we accept
that heritage is the result of the founding
of a certain number of values,
this implies that these values are the
basis of heritage. These values should
be examined, but also – sometimes –
contested.
42
5. The institution of heritage
also has its detractors: people who
question its origins and the abusive
‘fetishist’ value attached to the forms
of the underlying culture, in the
name of western humanism. In the
strictest sense of the word, that is to
say in the anthropological sense, our
cultural heritage is only made up of
very modest practices and skills. To
a far greater extent it depends on the
ability to make and use these tools,
especially when these are fixed as
objects inside a museum showcase.
Too often we forget that the most elaborate
and powerful tool invented by
man is the concept, the instrument
for developing thought, which is very
difficult to arrange in a showcase.
Cultural heritage understood as the
sum total of the common evidence of
humankind has been severely criticised
for being a new dogma (Choay,
1992) in a society which has lost its
religious bearings. It is possible,
moreover, to list the successive stages
of building this recent product: heritage
reappropriation (Vicq d’Azyr,
1794), spiritual connotation (Hegel,
1807), mystical, disinterested connotation
(Renan, 1882) and finally,
humanism (Malraux, 1947). The
notion of collective cultural heritage,
which only transposes the legal and
economic lexicon to the moral field,
appears suspicious, to say the least,
and can be analysed as being part of
that which Marx and Engels called
ideology, that is to say a by-product
of a socio-economic context intended
to serve special interests. “The
internationalisation of the concept
of heritage is […] not only false, but
dangerous in so far as one imposes a
whole set of knowledge and prejudices
whose criteria are the expression
of values built on aesthetic, moral,
and cultural received ideas, in short
an ideology of a caste in a society
whose structures are not compatible
with those of the third world in
general and Africa in particular”
(Adotevi, 1971). It is all the more
suspect because it coexists with the
private nature of economic property
and seems to serve as the consolation
prize for the deprived.
DERIVATIVES: HERITOLOGY, INHERITANCE.
CORRELATED: COMMUNITY, CULTURAL PROPERTY,
CULTURAL RELIC, EXHIBIT, EVIDENCE, IDENTITY, IMAGE,
LEGACY, LIVING HUMAN TREASURE, MATERIAL CULTURE,
MEMORY, MESSAGE, MONUMENT, NATIONAL TREASURE,
OBJECT, PATRIMONY, REALITY, SEMIOPHORE (SEE
OBJECT) SUBJECT, TERRITORY, THINGS, VALUE, WITNESS.
43
INSTITUTION
n. (From the Latin institutio, convention, set-
tingup,establishment,arrangement).Equivalent
in French: institution; Spanish: institución;
German: Institution; Italian: istituzione; Portuguese:
instituiçāo.
Generally speaking an institution
indicates a convention established by
mutual agreement between people,
being thus arbitrary but also historically
dated. Institutions are elements
in the broad range of solutions that
mankind has created to answer the
problems raised by the natural needs
of life in a society (Malinowski,
1944). More specifically, institution
refers to an organism that is public or
private, established by society to fill a
specific need. The museum is an institution
in the sense that it is governed
by an identified legal system of
public or private law (see the terms
Management and Public). Whether
it is based on the concept of public
trust (in Anglo-Saxon law) or public
ownership (in France from the Revolution),
demonstrates, beyond the
differences in conventions, a mutual
agreement between the people in a
society, that is to say an institution.
In French, when the term is associated
with the general qualifier
‘museal’ (institution muséale, in the
common sense of that which relates
to museums) it is often used as a
synonym for ‘museum’, most often
to avoid excessive repetition of the
word museum. The concept of institution,
for which there are three
precise accepted meanings, is nevertheless
central to debates regarding
museums.
1. There are two levels of institutions,
according to the nature of the
need they are intended to satisfy.
This need may be first of all biological
(need to eat, to reproduce, to
sleep, etc.) or secondly the result of
the demands of living in a society
(need for organisation, defence,
health, etc.). These two levels correspond
to two types of institution
that are unequally restrictive: meals,
marriage, lodging on the one hand,
and the State, the army, schools, hospitals,
on the other. In so far as they
meet a social need (sensory relation
to objects) museums belong to the
second category.
2. ICOM defines museum as a permanent
institution in the service of
society and its development. In this
sense the institution is a construction
created by man in the museal (see this
term) field, and organised in order to
enter into a sensory relationship with
I
44
objects. The museum institution,
created and maintained by society,
rests on a collection of standards
and rules (preventive conservation,
forbidden to touch objects or display
substitutes while presenting them
as originals) which are founded on
a value system: preservation of heritage,
presentation of works of art
and unique pieces, the dissemination
of current scientific knowledge, etc.
Emphasising the institutional nature
of museum thus means strengthening
its normative role and the authority it
has in science and the fine arts, for
example, or the idea that museums
remain “in the service of society and
its development.”
3. In contrast to the English, which
does not precisely differentiate
between them (and in general to the
way they are used in Belgium and in
Canadatoo),thetermsinstitutionand
establishment are not synonymous.
Museum, as an institution, is different
from museum as an establishment,
a specific concrete place: “The
museal establishment is a concrete
form of the museal institution”
(Maroevi´c, 2007). One should note
that questioning of the institution,
even purely and simply denying it (as
in the case of Malraux’s imaginary
museum or the fictitious museum of
the artist Marcel Broodthaers) does
not mean that it has left the museal
field, in so far as the museal field can
extend beyond the institutional framework.
In its strict sense, the term
virtual museum (existing in essence
but not in fact) takes account of these
museal experiences on the margin of
institutional reality.
This is why in many countries, in
particular in Canada and Belgium,
people use the expression ‘museal
institution’ (institution muséale) to
identify an establishment which
does not have all the characteristics
of a traditional museum. “By museal
institutions, we mean non-profit establishments,
museums, exhibition and
interpretation centres which, besides
the functions of acquisition, conservation,
research and management of
collections that some may carry out,
have in common that they are places
of education and dissemination
dedicated to the arts, history and the
sciences.” (Société des musées québécois,
Observatoire de la culture et des
communautés du Québec, 2004).
4. Finally, the term ‘museal institution’
can be defined, like ‘financial
institution’ (the IMF or the
World Bank) as all the national or
international bodies which govern
museum operations, such as ICOM
or the former Direction des musées
de France.
DERIVATIVES: INSTITUTIONAL, MUSEAL INSTITUTION.
CORRELATED: ESTABLISHMENT, PUBLIC DOMAIN,
PUBLIC OWNERSHIP, PUBLIC TRUST, VIRTUAL MUSEUM.
45
MANAGEMENT
n. – Equivalent French: gestion; Spanish: gestión;
German: Verwaltung, Administration; Italian:
gestione; Portuguese: gestāo.
Museum management is defined
today as the action of ensuring the
running of the museum’s administrative
business and, more generally,
all the activities which are
not directly attached to the specific
fields of museum work (preservation,
research and communication). In this
regard, museum management essentially
encompasses tasks relating to
financial (accounting, management
control, finances) and legal responsibilities,
to security and upkeep, to
staff management and to marketing
as well as to strategic procedures
and the general planning of museum
activities. The term management is
of Anglo-Saxon origin (although
the Anglo-Saxon term comes from
the French manège and ménage),
and is currently used in French with
the same meaning. The guidelines
or ‘style’ of management illustrate
a certain concept of museums – in
particular its relationship to public
service.
Traditionally the term administration
(from the Latin administratio,
service, aid, handling) was used to
define this type of museum activity,
but also, more generally, all the activities
necessary to make a museum
function. The treatise of museology
by George Brown Goode, Museum
Administration (1896), examines the
aspects connected with the study of
thedisplayofcollectionsandthedaily
management, while also addressing
the overall vision of the museum and
its integration into society. Rightfully
derived from the civil service rationale,
the act of administering means,
whether referring to a public or a private
service, ensuring that it operates
properly while taking responsibility
for initiating and running all its activities.
The notion of (public) service,
or even, with its religious undertones,
that of vocation, is closely related to
administration.
We are aware of the bureaucratic
connotation of the term ‘administration’
since it is used in connection
with the (dys)function of public
authorities. So it is not surprising that
the general evolution of economic
theory in the last quarter of a century,
favouring the market economy, has
led to increasingly frequent recourse
to the concept of management,
which had been in use for a long
M
46
time within profit-making organisations.
The concepts of market launch
and museum marketing, like the
development of tools for museums
that have resulted from businesses
(defining strategies, focusing on the
public/visitor, resource management,
fundraising, etc.) has considerably
changed the museums themselves.
Thus some of the conflicts regarding
museum organisation and policies
have been directly conditioned by
the conflict, within the museum
itself, between a market rationale and
a more traditional rationale of governance
by public authorities. The
result has been the development of
new forms of financing (expansion of
the ranges of museum shops, renting
of premises, reintroducing entrance
fees, developing popular temporary
exhibitions – blockbusters – or even
selling objects from the collection.
Increasingly these tasks which were
auxiliary when they first began have
had a real impact on the conduct of
other museum tasks, to the point
that they have sometimes been developed
to the detriment of the other
operations required for preservation,
research and even communication.
The specificity of museum management,
which may be structured
around the sometimes contradictory
or hybrid logics of the market on the
one hand, and the public authorities
on the other hand, derives from the
fact that it is structured around the
logic of giving (Mauss, 1923), through
donations of objects and money or
the actions of volunteers and associations
of friends of the museum.
Although donations and volunteer
activities are properly and implicitly
taken into account, this aspect has
been less examined for its medium
and long-term impact on museum
management.
DERIVATIVES: MANAGER, COLLECTION
MANAGEMENT
CORRELATED: ADMINISTRATION, BLOCKBUSTERS,
BOARD OF DIRECTORS, ENTRANCE FEES, FEASIBILITY
STUDY, FUNDRAISING, FRIENDS, HUMAN RESOURCES,
MISSION STATEMENT, MUSEUM MARKETING, MUSEUM
TRUSTEES, NON-PROFIT ORGANISATIONS, PERFORMANCE
MARKERS, PROJECTS, PLANNING, STRATEGY,
VOLUNTEERS.
MEDIATION
(INTERPRETATION)
n. (from 15th
century Vulgar Latin: mediatio,
de mediare) – Equivalent in French: médiation;
Spanish: mediación; German: Vermittlung; Italian:
mediazione; Portuguese: mediaçāo.
Mediation is the translation of the
French médiation, which has the
same general museum meaning as
‘interpretation’. Mediation is defined
as an action aimed at reconciling parties
or bringing them to agreement.
In the context of the museum, it is
the mediation between the museum
public and what the museum gives
its public to see; intercession, intermediate,
mediator. Etymologically
we find in mediation the root med,
meaning ‘middle’, a root which can
be found in many languages besides
English (Spanish medio, German
mitte) and which reminds us that
mediation is connected with the idea
47
of being in the median position, that
of a third element which places itself
between two distant poles and acts
as an intermediary. While this position
characterises the legal aspects of
mediation,wheresomeonenegotiates
in order to reconcile adversaries and
reach a modus vivendi, it also points
to the meaning that this concept
takes in the cultural and scientific fie
ld of museology. Here too mediation
is an in-between, filling a space that it
will try to reduce, creating a connection
or even acceptance.
1. The notion of mediation works
on several levels: on the philosophical
level it served Hegel and his disciples
to describe the movement of history
itself. Dialectics, the driving force
of history, advances by successive
mediations: a first situation (the thesis)
must pass through the mediation
of its opposite (antithesis) to progress
to a new condition (synthesis) which
retains something of each of the two
preceding moments.
The general concept of mediation
also leads us to think about
the institution of culture itself as
the transmission of that common
heritage which unites the members
of a community and in which they
recognise themselves. In this sense
of the word mediation, it is through
the mediation of its culture that individuals
perceive and understand the
world and their own identity; several
writers speak of symbolic mediation.
Again in the cultural field, mediation
acts to analyse the ‘making public’ of
ideas and cultural products – their
being taken care of by the media
– and to describe their circulation
in the whole social sphere. The
cultural sphere is seen as a dynamic,
nebulous area where products mix
together and take over from one another.
Here the reciprocal mediation
of cultural products leads to the idea
of intermediality, of the relationship
between medias and the way in which
one media – television or cinema for
example – translates forms of production
made in another media (a
novel adapted for the cinema). These
creations reach their targets by one
or other of the various technical aids
that make up their mediatisation.
From this angle, analysis shows that
many mediations are set in motion by
complex chains of different agents
to guarantee content in the cultural
sphere and ensure that this content
reaches a broad public.
2. In museology the term mediation
has been in frequent use in
France and in European Frenchspeaking
zones for more than a
decade, when speaking of ‘cultural
mediation’, or ‘scientific mediation’
and ‘mediator’. Essentially it refers
to a whole range of actions carried
out in a museal context in order to
build bridges between that which
is exhibited (seeing) and the meanings
that these objects and sites may
carry (knowledge). Mediation sometimes
seeks to favour the sharing of
experiences and social interactions
between visitors, and the emergence
of common references. This is an
educational communication strategy,
48
which mobilises diverse technologies
around the collections exhibited
to give visitors the means to better
understand certain aspects of these
and to share in their appropriation.
The term thus touches on the neighbouring
museological concepts of
communication and museum public
relations, and especially interpretation,
very much present in the AngloSaxon
museum world and on North
American sites where it overlaps
to a great extent with the notion of
mediation. Interpretation, like mediation,
assumes a divergence, a distance
that must be overcome between that
which is immediately perceived and
the underlying meanings of natural,
cultural or historical phenomena.
Like means of mediation, interpretation
materialises in interpersonal
human actions and in aids which
enhance the straightforward display
of exhibited objects to suggest their
meaning and importance. Born in the
context of American natural parks,
the notion of interpretation has since
expanded to mean the hermeneutic
nature of the experience of visiting
museums and sites. Thus it can be
defined as a revelation and unveiling
which leads visitors to understand,
and then to appreciate, and finally to
protect the heritage which it takes as
its object.
In the end, mediation comprises
a central notion in a philosophy
which is hermeneutic and reflective
(Paul Ricœur). It plays a fundamental
role in each visitor’s quest for selfknowledge,
a knowledge facilitated
by the museum. When the viewer
stands face to face with works produced
by other humans it is through
mediation that he or she can arrive at
a special subjectivity which can inspire
self-knowledge and understanding
of one’s own human adventure.
This approach makes the museum,
the custodian of the evidence and
signs of humanity, one of the best
places for this inescapable mediation
which, in offering contact with
the world of cultural works, leads
each person on the path of a greater
understanding of self, and of reality
as a whole.
DERIVATIVES: MEDIATION, MEDIATOR, TO MEDIATE.
CORRELATED: ACTIVITIES, EDUCATION,
INTERCESSION, INTERPRETATION, POPULARISATION,
PUBLIC RELATIONS, VISITOR EXPERIENCE.
MUSEAL
adj. – Equivalent in French: muséal; Spanish:
museal; German: museal; Italian: museale;
Portuguese: museal.
The word has two meanings in
French (one when it is used as an
adjective to qualify ‘museum’ and
another when it is used as a noun),
but only one in English, where it has
been rarely used until now, to qualify
a field covering more than the classical
notion of ‘museum’. The museal
field covers not only the creation,
development and operation of the
museum institution but also reflections
on its foundations and issues.
The museal field of reference is characterised
by a specific approach,
49
which establishes a viewpoint on
reality with regard to the world of
heritage (to consider something from
the museal angle, for example, means
to ask oneself whether it is possible
to preserve it for exhibition to the
public). Museology can thus be defined
as all the attempts to theorise
or think critically about the museal
field, or as the ethics and philosophy
of that which is museal.
1. Museal identifies a “specific
relation to reality” (Stránský, 1987;
Gregorová, 1980). This places it
alongside politics and on the same
level as social life, religion, demographics,
economics and so on. Each
example is a sphere or an original
field in which problems will be raised
which will be answered by concepts.
Thus the same phenomenon can
be found at the point where several
levels meet or, to speak in terms of
multidimensional statistical analysis,
it will project itself onto several
heterogeneous levels. For example,
GMO (genetically modified organisms)
can be simultaneously a
technical problem (biotechnology),
a health problem (risks regarding
the biosphere), a political problem
(ecological issues), and also a museal
problem: some social museums have
decided to stage exhibitions on the
risks and the issues of GMO.
2. This position of museal as a
theoretical field of reference opens
considerable avenues to expanded
thinking, because the museum as
institution now appears to be just one
illustration or example of the entire
field. This has two consequences:
(1) It was not museums that gave rise
to museology, but rather museology
that founded museums (the Copernican
revolution); (2) This allows us to
understand that experiences which
are of a different nature to those
usually identified with museums
(collections, building, institution)
are part of the same problem, and
to accept museums of substitutes,
museums without collections, extramural
museums, towns as museums
(Quatremère de Quincy, 1796),
and ecomuseums or even cyber
museums.
3. The specificity of the museal
field, in other words, that which
makes it unequivocal compared
to neighbouring fields, lies in two
aspects: (1) sensory display, which sets
the museal apart from the textual,
managed in a library, which offers
a documentation relayed through
the medium of writing (mainly that
which is printed; books) and which
requires not only the knowledge of
a language but also the ability to
read. This procures an experience
which is more abstract and more
theoretical at the same time. On the
other hand, a museum does not need
any of these aptitudes, because the
documentation it proposes is above
all sensory, perceivable by sight and
sometimes by hearing, more rarely by
the three other senses of touch, taste
and smell. This means that an illiterate
person or even a young child
can always gain something from a
museum visit, whereas they would
50
be incapable of using the resources
of a library. This also explains experiences
of visits adapted for blind or
partially sighted people, where other
senses are called in to play (hearing
and especially touch) to discover
the sensory aspects of the exhibits.
A painting or a sculpture is made to
be seen first of all, and reference to
a text (or reading a placard if there
is one) only comes afterwards and
is not absolutely essential. Thus we
can say when of the museum that it
fulfils a “sensory documentary function”
(Deloche, 2007). (2) Marginalising
reality, because the museum
“specifies itself while separating
itself” (Lebensztein, 1981). Unlike a
political field where it is possible to
theorise about the management of
the concrete lives of people in society
through the mediation of institutions
such as the State, that which is museal
on the other hand serves to theorise
about the way in which an institution
creates, through separation and decontextualisation,
in short through
the putting into images, a space for
sensory display “at the margin of all
reality” (Sartre). This is the essence
of a utopia, that is to say a completely
imaginary space, certainly symbolic
but not necessarily intangible.
This second point characterises what
one might call the utopian function
of museums, because in order to
change the world, one must be able
to imagine it otherwise, and thus to
distance oneself from it, which is
why utopia as a fiction is not necessarily
a lack or a deficiency, but rather
the imagining of a different world.
DERIVATIVES: MUSEAL FIELD, MUSEALIA,
MUSEALITY, MUSEALISATION.
CORRELATED: MUSEOLOGY, MUSEUM,
MUSEUMIFICATION (PEJORATIVE), REALITY, SENSORY
DISPLAY, SENSORY EXPERIENCE, SPECIFIC RELATION.
MUSEALISATION
n. – Equivalent in French: muséalisation;
Spanish: musealisación; German: Musealisierung;
Italian: musealizazione; Portuguese:
musealisaçāo.
In the accepted understanding of
the term, musealisation means the
placing in the museum, or more
generally, transforming a centre of
life, which may be a centre of human
activity or a natural site, into a sort
of museum. The expression ‘heritagisation’
is undoubtedly a better description
of this principle, which rests
essentially on the idea of preservation
of an object or a place, but does not
cover the entire museal process. The
neologism ‘museumification’ translates
the pejorative idea of the ‘petrification’
(or mummification) of a living
area, which may result from such a
process and which may be found
in numerous critical reviews about
the ‘musealisation of the world’.
From a strictly museological point
of view, musealisation is the operation
of trying to extract, physically
or conceptually, something from its
natural or cultural environment and
giving it a museal status, transforming
it into a musealium or ‘museum
object’, that is to say, bringing it into
the museal field.
51
The process of musealisation does
not consist of taking an object to
place it within the physical confines
of the museum, as Zbyneˇk Stránský
explains. Through the change of
context and the process of selection
and display, the status of the object
changes. Whether it is a religious
object, a useful object or one for
enjoyment, animal or vegetable, even
something that may not be clearly
conceived as an object, once inside
the museum it becomes the material
and intangible evidence of man
and his environment and a source of
study and exhibition, thus acquiring
a specific cultural reality.
The recognition of this change in
nature caused Stránský, in 1970, to
propose the term musealia to identify
objects which had undergone the
process of musealisation and could
thus claim the status of museum
objects. The term was translated into
French as muséalie (see Object).
Musealisation begins with a phase
of separation (Malraux, 1951) or of
suspension (Déotte, 1986): objects
or things (real things) are separated
from their original context to be studied
as documents representing the
reality to which they formerly belonged.
A museum object is no longer
an object to be used or exchanged,
but now delivers authentic evidence
of reality. This removal (Desvallées,
1998) from reality is already an initial
form of substitution. An object separated
from the context from where
it was taken is already no more than
a substitute for the reality of which
it is supposed to be evidence. This
transfer, by the separation that has
been made from the original environment,
inevitably causes a loss of
information, which can be seen most
clearly from illegal archaeological
digs where the context of the objects
has been completely lost as they were
unearthed. It is for this reason that
musealisation, as a scientific process,
necessarily includes the essential
museum activities: preservation
(selection, acquisition, collection
management, conservation), research
(including cataloguing) and communication
(via exhibition, publications,
etc.) or, from another point
of view, the activities around the
selection, collection and display of
what has become musealia. At most,
the work of musealisation gives an
image which is only a substitute for
the reality from which these objects
were chosen. This complex substitute,
or model of reality (built within
the museum) comprises museality,
that is to say a specific value which
documents reality, but is in no way
reality itself.
Musealisation goes beyond the
logic of collections alone and is part
of the tradition founded on rational
processes developed with the invention
of modern sciences. The object
carrying the information or the
document-object, once musealised,
is incorporated into the core of the
museum’s scientific activity just as
this has developed since the Renaissance.
The purpose of this activity is
to explore reality by means of sen-
52
sory perception, experiment, and
study of its constituent parts. This
scientific perspective conditions the
objective and repeated study of the
thing which has been conceptualized
into an object, beyond the aura
which obscures its meaning. Not
contemplating, but seeing: the scientific
museum not only displays beautiful
objects, it invites the visitor to
think about their meaning. The act
of musealisation leads the museum
away from being a temple to make it
part of a process which brings it closer
to the laboratory.
CORRELATED: COLLECTING, COMMUNICATION,
DISPLAY, DOCUMENT-OBJECT, HOARDING, MUSEALIA,
MUSEALITY, MUSEUM OBJECT, PRESERVATION, RESEARCH,
RELIC, SELECTION, SEPARATION, SUSPENSION.
MUSEOGRAPHY
(MUSEUM PRACTICE)
n. (derived from Latin museographia) – French
equivalent: muséographie, Spanish: museografía;
German: Museographie; Italian: museografia;
Portuguese: museografia.
The term museography first appeared
in the 18th
century (Neikel, 1727) and
is older than the word museology. It
has three specific meanings:
1. Currently museography is
essentially defined as the practical
or applied aspect of museology, that
is to say the techniques which have
been developed to fulfil museal operations,
in particular with regard
to the planning and fitting out of
the museum premises, conservation,
restoration, security and exhibition.
In contrast to museology,
the word museography has long
been used to identify the practical
activities associated with museums.
The term is regularly used in the
French-speaking world, but rarely in
the English-speaking one, where
museum practice is preferred. Many
museologists from Central and Eastern
Europe have used the term
applied museology, that is to say, the
practical application of techniques
resulting from the study of museology,
a science undergoing develop-
ment.
2. In French the use of the term
museography identifies the art (or
the techniques) of exhibitions. For
some years the term expography
(exhibit design) has been proposed
for the techniques involved in exhibitions,
whether they be in a museum
or in a non-museal space. Generally
speaking, what we call the ‘museographical
programme’ covers definition
of the contents of the exhibition
and its requirements, as well as the
functional links between the exhibition
spaces and the other museum
areas. This definition does not mean
that museography (museum practice)
is defined only by that part of the
museum which is seen by the visitor.
Museographers (museum designers
or exhibit designers), like other
museum professionals, take into
account the scientific programme
and collection management, and aim
to display the objects selected by the
curator in a suitable manner. They
must know methods of conserva-
53
tion and how to inventorize museum
objects. They create the scenario for
the contents and propose a form of
language which includes additional
media to aid understanding. They
are concerned with the needs of
the public and employ the communication
methods most suitable for
putting across the message of the
exhibition. Their role, often as the
head of a project, is to coordinate
all the scientific and technical specialists
working within a museum:
organising them, sometimes clashing
with them and arbitrating. Other
specific posts have been created to
fulfil these tasks: the management
of the art works or objects is left to
the registrars, the head of security is
responsible for surveillance and the
tasks carried out by this department,
the conservator is a specialist in preventive
conservation and in remedial
conservation measures, and even
restoration. It is in this context, and
in interrelation with the different
departments, that museographers
concern themselves with the exhibition
tasks. Museography is distinct
from scenography (exhibition or
stage design), which is understood to
mean all the techniques required for
installing and fitting out display spaces,
just as it is different from interior
design. Certainly stage design
and museum interior design are a
part of museography, which brings
museums closer to other methods
of visualisation, but other elements
must also be taken into account such
as the public, its understanding of
the message, and the preservation
of heritage. These aspects make
museographers (or exhibition specialists)
the intermediary between
the collections curator, the architect
and the public. Their role varies,
however, depending whether or not
the museum or the exhibition site
has a curator to lead the project.
The further development of the role
of some specialists within museums
(architects, artists, exhibition curators,
etc.) has led to a constant finetuning
of the museogapher’s role as
intermediary.
3. Formerly and through its etymology,
museography referred to
the description of the contents of
a museum. Just as a bibliography
is one of the fundamental stages of
scientific research, museography
was devised as a way to facilitate the
search for documentary sources of
objects in order to develop their systematic
study. This meaning endured
throughout the 19th
century and still
continues today in some languages,
in particular Russian.
DERIVATIVES: MUSEOGRAPHER, MUSEOGRAPHIC.
CORRELATED: EXHIBITION DESIGN, EXHIBITION
PRACTICE, INTERIOR DESIGN, MUSEUM FUNCTIONS,
MUSEUM OPERATIONS, MUSEUM PRACTICE.
MUSEOLOGY
(MUSEUM STUDIES)
n. – Equivalent in French: muséologie; Spanish:
museología; German: Museologie,
Museumswissenschaft, Museumskunde; Italian:
museologia; Portuguese: museologia.
54
Etymologically speaking museology
is the ‘study of the museum’ (or
museum studies), and not its practice,
which is museography. But the term
museology and its derivative museological,
accepted in its wider sense in
the 1950s, now has five clearly distinct
meanings.
1. The first and most commonly
accepted meaning applies the term
museology to anything relating to
museums and generally listed, in
this dictionary, under the heading
museal. Thus one might speak of
the museological departments of a
library (the reserved section or the
numismatic cabinet), museological
questions (relating to museums) and
so on. This is often the meaning used
in Anglo-Saxon countries, which has
even spread from North America
to Latin-American countries. Thus,
where there is no specific recognised
profession, such as in France where
the general term curator (conservateur)
would be used, the term museologist
applies to the entire museum
profession (for example in Québec),
in particular to consultants given the
task of drawing up a museum project
or creating and staging an exhibition.
This use is not favoured here.
2. The second meaning of the
term is generally accepted in many
western university networks and is
close to the etymological sense of
the word: museum studies. The most
commonly used definition is that
proposed by Georges Henri Rivière:
“Museology: an applied science, the
science of the museum. Museology
studies its history, its role in society,
the specific forms of research and
physical conservation, activities
and dissemination, organisation
and functioning, new or musealised
architecture, sites that have been
received or chosen, its typology
and its deontology” (Rivière, 1981).
In some ways museology contrasts
with museography, which refers to
the practices attached to museology.
Anglo-Americans are generally
reluctant to accept the invention of
new ‘sciences’ and have favoured
the expression museum studies, particularly
in Great Britain where the
term museology is still rarely used
to date. Although the term has been
increasingly frequently applied internationally
since the 1950s, along with
the increased interest in museums, it
is still rarely used by people who live
with museums on a daily basis, and
the use of the term remains limited
to people who observe the museum
from the outside. This use of museology,
widely accepted by professionals,
has gradually established itself
inRomancecountriesfromthe1960s,
replacing the term museography.
3. From the 1960s in Central and
Eastern Europe, museology gradually
came to be considered as a
genuine field of scientific research
(albeit a developing science) and an
independent discipline examining
reality. This view, which greatly
influenced ICOFOM in the years
1980-1990, presents museology as
the study of a specific relationship
between man and reality, a study in
55
which museums, a phenomenon set
in a specific time, are only one of the
possible manifestations. “Museology
is a self-differentiating, independent
scientific discipline the subject of
which is a specific attitude of man
to reality expressed objectively in
various museum forms throughout
history, an expression of and a
proportionate part of memory systems.
Museology, by nature a social
science, pertains to the sphere of
mnemonic and documentary scientific
disciplines, and contributes to
the understanding of Man within
society” (Stránský, 1980). This particular
approach, freely criticised (the
determination to impose museology
as a science and to cover the whole
field of heritage seemed pretentious
to more than one), but it is nonetheless
fertile with regard to its implications.
Thus the object of museology
is not the museum, since this is a
creation that is relatively recent in
terms of the history of humanity.
Taking this statement as a starting
point, the concept of a “specific relation
of man to reality”, sometimes
referred to as museality (Waidacher,
1996), was gradually defined. Thus
following in the wake of the Brno
school which prevailed at the time
one could define museology as “A
science studying the specific relation
of Man to reality, consisting of the
purposeful and systematic collecting
and conservation of selected inanimate,
material, mobile, and mainly
three-dimensional objects documenting
the development of nature and
society” (Gregorová, 1980). However,
the likening of museology to a
science – even under development
– has slowly been abandoned in so
far as neither its object of study, nor
its methods, truly correspond to the
epistemological criteria of a specific
scientific approach.
4. The new museology (la nouvelle
muséologie in French, where the
concept originated) widely influenced
museology in the 1980s, first
gathering some French theoreticians
and then spreading internationally
from 1984. Referring to a few pioneers
who had published innovative
texts since 1970, this current of
thought emphasised the social role
of museums and its interdisciplinary
character, along with its new styles of
expression and communication. New
museology was particularly interested
in new types of museums, conceived
in contrast to the classical model
in which collections are the centre of
interest. These new museums are ecomuseums,
social museums, scientific
and cultural centres, and generally
speaking, most of the new proposals
aimed at using the local heritage
to promote local development. In
English museum literature the term
New Museology appeared at the end
of the 1980s (Virgo, 1989) and is a
critical discourse on the social and
political role of museums – lending
a certain confusion to the spread of
the French term, which is less known
to the English-speaking public.
5. According to a fifth meaning
of the term, which we favour here
56
because it includes all the others,
museology covers a much wider field
comprising all the efforts at theorisation
and critical thinking about
the museal field. In other words,
the common denominator of this
field could be defined as a specific
relation between man and reality,
which is expressed by documenting
that which is real and can be grasped
through direct sensory contact. This
definition does not reject a priori any
formofmuseum,includingtheoldest
(Quiccheberg) and the most recent
(cyber museums), because it tends to
concern itself with a domain which
is freely open to all experiments in
the museal field. Nor is it limited to
people who call themselves museologists.
We should note that if some
protagonists have made museology
their field of choice, to the point of
presenting themselves as museologists,
others tied to their professional
branch who only approach the
museal sphere on occasion prefer to
keep a certain distance from “museologists”,
even though they have, or
have had, a fundamental influence
in the development of this field of
study (Bourdieu, Baudrillard, Dagognet,
Debray, Foucault, Haskell,
McLuhan, Nora or Pomian). The
guidelines in a map of the museal
field can be traced in two different
directions: either with reference to
the main functions inherent to the
field (documentation, collecting,
display and safeguarding, research,
communication), or by considering
the different branches of knowledge
which examine museology from time
to time.
With this last view in mind, Bernard
Deloche proposed defining
museology as museal philosophy.
“Museology is the philosophy of the
museal field which has two tasks:
(1) it serves as metatheory for the
science of intuitive concrete documentation,
(2) it provides regulating
ethics for all institutions responsible
for managing the intuitive concrete
documentary function” (Deloche,
2001).
DERIVATIVES: MUSEOLOGICAL, MUSEOLOGIST.
CORRELATED: MUSEAL, MUSEALIA MUSEALITY,
MUSEALISATION, MUSEALIZE, MUSEOGRAPHY,
MUSEUM, MUSEUM OBJECT, NEW MUSEOLOGY,
REALITY.
MUSEUM
n. (from the Greek mouseion, temple of the
muses). – Equivalent in French: musée; Spanish:
museo; German: Museum; Italian: museo;
Portuguese: museu.
The term ‘museum’ may mean either
the institution or the establishment
or the place generally designed to
select, study and display the material
and intangible evidence of man and
his environment. The form and the
functions of museums have varied
considerably over the centuries.
Their contents have diversified, as
have their mission, their way of operating
and their management.
1. Most countries have established
definitions of museum through
legislative texts or national organi-
57
sations. The professional definition
of museum most widely recognized
today is still that given in 2007 in the
Statutes of the International Council
of Museums (ICOM): “A museum
is a non-profit, permanent institution
in the service of society and its
development, open to the public,
which acquires, conserves, researches,
communicates and exhibits
the tangible and intangible heritage
of humanity and its environment for
the purposes of education, study and
enjoyment.” This definition replaces
that used as the term of reference
for over 30 years: “A museum is a
non-profit making, permanent institution
in the service of the society
and its development, and open to the
public, which acquires, conserves,
researches, communicates, and exhibits,
for purposes of study, education
and enjoyment, material evidence of
man and his environment” (ICOM
Statutes, 1974).
The difference between these two
definitions, which is at first sight
barely significant – a reference to
the intangible heritage added and
a few changes in structure – nevertheless
attests on the one hand to the
preponderance of Anglo-American
logic within ICOM, and on the other
to a diminution of the role given to
research within the institution. Initially
the 1974 definition, written in
French as the lead language, was a
fairly free translation into English to
better reflect the Anglo-American
logic about museum functions – one
of which is the transmission of heritage.
English has become the working
language most widely used in
council meetings, and ICOM, like
most international organisations,
now operates in English too; it seems
that the work to draft a new definition
was based on this English translation.
The structure of the French
definition of 1974 emphasised
research, introduced as the driving
force of the institution: “Le musée est
une institution permanente, sans but
lucratif, au service de la société et de
son développement, ouverte au public
et qui fait des recherches concernant
les témoins matériels de l’homme
et de son environnement, acquiert
ceux-là, les conserve, les communique
et notamment les expose à des fins
d’études, d’éducation et de délectation.”
(ICOM Statutes, 1974). The
literal translation, but not the official
one, reads: “A museum is a permanent,
non-profit institution, in the
service of the society and its development,
open to the public, which
does research regarding the material
evidence of man and his environment…”,
In 2007 the principle of
research (modified in French by the
word étudier - to study) was relegated
to a list of the general functions
of museums, as in the 1974 English
version.
2. For many museologists, and in
particular those who claim to adhere
to the concept of museology taught
in the years 1960-1990 by the Czech
school (Brno and the International
Summer School of Museology), the
museum is only one means among
58
many that attest to a “specific relationship
between Man and reality”,
a relationship which is defined by
“purposeful and systematic collecting
and conservation of selected inanimate,
material, mobile, and mainly
three-dimensional objects documenting
the development of nature
and society” (Gregorová, 1980).
Before the museum was defined as
such in the 18th
century, according
to a concept borrowed from Greek
antiquity and its revival during the
western Renaissance, every civilisation
had a number of places, institutions
and establishments that were
more or less similar to those that we
group under the same word today.
In this regard the ICOM definition
is considered to be clearly marked
by its time and its western context,
but also too prescriptive, since its
purpose is essentially corporatist.
A ‘scientific’ definition of museum
should, in this sense, free itself
from certain elements contributed
by ICOM, such as the not-for-profit
aspect of a museum: a profit-making
museum (such as the Musée Grévin
in Paris) is still a museum, even if it
is not recognised by ICOM. We can
thus more broadly and more objectively
define museum as “a permanent
museological institution, which preserves
collections of ‘physical documents’
and generates knowledge
about them” (Van Mensch, 1992).
For his part Schärer defines museum
as “a place where things and related
values are preserved studied and
communicated, as signs that interpret
absent facts” (Schärer, 2007) or,
in a way that seems tautological at
first, as the place where the musealisation
takes place. In an even wider
sense, the museum can be understood
as a “place of memory” (Nora,
1984; Pinna, 2003), a ‘phenomenon’
(Scheiner, 2007), covering institutions,
different places or territories,
experiences, and even intangible
spaces.
3. From this perspective which
goes beyond the limited nature of
the traditional museum, it is defined
as a tool devised by man with the
purpose of archiving, understanding,
and transmitting. One could,
like Judith Spielbauer (1987), say
that museums are an instrument
to foster “an individual’s perception
of the interdependence of the
social, aesthetic and natural worlds
in which he lives by providing information
and experience and fostering
self-knowledge within this wider
context.” Museums can also be “a
specific function which may or may
not take on the features of an institution,
the objective of which is
to ensure, through a sensory experience,
the storage and transmission
of culture understood as the entire
body of acquisitions that make a
man out of a being who is genetically
human” (Deloche, 2007).
These definitions cover museums
which are incorrectly referred to as
virtual museums (in particular those
that are on paper, on CD-ROM or
on the Web) as well as more traditional
institutional museums, inclu-
59
ding even the museums of antiquity,
which were more schools of philosophy
than collections in the accepted
sense of the term.
4. This last use of the term
museum brings us to the principles
of the ecomuseum in its original
conception, that is to say a museal
institution which, for the development
of a community, combines
conservation, display and explanation
of the cultural and natural heritage
held by this same community;
the ecomuseum represents a living
and working environment on a given
territory, and the research associated
with it. “The ecomuseum […] on a
given territory, expresses the relationship
between man and nature
through time and space on this territory.
It is composed of property of
recognised scientific and cultural
interest which is representative of
the community it serves: non-built
immovable property, natural wild
spaces, natural spaces occupied by
man; built immovable property;
movable property; fungible goods.
It includes an administrative centre,
headquarters of the major structures:
reception, research, conservation,
display, cultural action, administration,
in particular one or more field
laboratories, conservation bodies,
meeting halls, socio-cultural workshops,
accommodation etc.; trails and
observation points for exploring the
territory; different architectural,
archaeological and geological elements…duly
indicated and explained”
(Rivière, 1978).
5. With the development of computers
and the digital world the
concept of cyber museum, often
incorrectly called ‘virtual’, gradually
became accepted; a notion generally
defined as “a logically related collection
of digital objects composed in a
variety of media which, through its
connectivity and its multi-accessible
nature, lends itself to transcending
traditional methods of communicating
and interacting with visitors..;
it has no real place or space; its
objects and the related information
can be disseminated all over the
world” (Schweibenz, 1998). This
definition, probably derived from
the relatively recent notion of virtual
computer memory, appears to
be something of a misinterpretation.
We must remember that ‘virtual’ is
not the opposite of ‘real’, as we tend
to believe too readily, but rather the
opposite of ‘actual’ in its original
sense of ‘now existing’. An egg is a
virtual chicken; it is programmed
to become a chicken and should
become one if nothing gets in the
way of its development. In this sense
the virtual museum can be seen as all
the museums conceivable, or all the
conceivable solutions applied to the
problems answered by traditional
museums. Thus the virtual museum
can be defined as a “concept which
globally identifies the problem areas
of the museal field, that is to say the
effects of the process of decontextualisation/recontextualisation;
a
collection of substitutes can be a
virtual museum just as much as a
computerised data base; it is the
60
museum in its exterior theatre of operations”
(Deloche, 2001). The virtual
museum is the package of solutions
that may be applied to museum problems,
and naturally includes the
cyber museum, but is not limited
to it.
DERIVATIVES: VIRTUAL MUSEUM.
CORRELATED: CYBER MUSEUM, MUSEAL,
MUSEALIA, MUSEALISATION, MUSEALISE, MUSEOGRAPHER,
MUSEOGRAPHY, MUSEOLOGICAL, MUSEOLOGIST,
MUSEOLOGY, MUSEUMIFICATION (PEJORATIVE), MUSEUM
STUDIES, NEW MUSEOLOGY, EXHIBITION, INSTITUTION,
PRIVATE COLLECTIONS, REALITY.
61
OBJECT [MUSEUM
OBJECT] OR MUSEALIA
n. – (from the Latin objectum, past participle
objectare, to throw against) – Equivalent
in French: objet; Spanish: objeto; German:
Objekt, Gegenstand; Italian: oggetto; Portuguese:
objecto, (Brazilian: objeto)
The term museum object is sometimes
replaced by the neologism
musealia, modelled on the Latin neuter
noun musealium with musealia in
the plural. The equivalent in French:
muséalie (rarely used), musealia; Spanish:
musealia; German: Musealie,
Museumsobjekt; Italian: musealia;
Portuguese: musealia.
In the simplest philosophical
sense of the word an object is not in
itself a form of reality, but a product,
a result, or an equivalence. In other
words it means that which is placed,
or thrown forward (ob-jectum,
Gegen-stand) by a subject, who treats
it as different from himself, even if he
considers himself as an object. This
distinction between the subject and
the object developed relatively late
and is a feature of Western culture.
In this way the object is different
from the thing, which is related to
the subject as a continuation or an
implement (for example, a tool as a
continuation of the hand is a thing
and not an object).
A museum object is something
which is musealised; a thing can be
defined as any kind of reality in general.
The expression ‘museum object’
could almost be a pleonasm in so far
as the museum is not only the place
which shelters objects, but also a
place with the principal mission of
transforming things into objects.
1. The object is not in any case
raw, reality or simply a given item
which it would be sufficient to collect,
for example, to be part of a
museum’s collection, as one would
collect seashells on the shore. It is an
ontological status which, in given circumstances,
a particular thing will
assume, on the understanding that
the thing would not be considered
an object in other circumstances.
The difference between the thing
and the object lies in the fact that the
thing has become a concrete part of
life and that the relationship we have
with it is a relationship of affection
or symbiosis. This is revealed by the
animism of societies often reputed
to be ‘primitive’: it is a relationship
of usability, as is the case of the tool
adapted to the shape of the hand.
By contrast, an object is always that
which the subject sets down in front
of himself, and separate from him; it
is thus what is ‘facing’ and different.
O
62
In this sense the object is abstract
and dead, closed on itself, as evidenced
by that series of objects which
is a collection (Baudrillard, 1968).
This status of the object is considered
today to be a purely western product
(Choay, 1968; Van Lier, 1969;
Adotevi, 1971), in so far as it was the
West which broke with the tribal
way of life and thought about the gap
between subjects and objects for the
first time (Descartes, Kant, and later
McLuhan, 1969).
2. Through their work of acquisition,
research, preservation and
communication, museums can be
presented as one of the major authorities
in the ‘production’ of objects.
In this case, the museum object –
musealium or musealia – does not
have any intrinsic reality, even if the
museum is not the only instrument
to ‘produce’ objects. In fact other
approaches are ‘objectivising’ as is
the case in particular for scientific
processes to establish reference
standards (c.f., measurement scales)
which are completely independent of
the subject and which consequently
find it difficult to treat that which is
living as such (Bergson) because it
tends to turn it into an object, wherein
lies the difficulty of physiology
compared to anatomy. The museal
object is made to be seen, with its
whole mass of implicit connotations,
because we can display it in order
to stir emotions, to entertain, or to
teach. This action of displaying is so
essential that it is what turns a thing
into an object by creating this distance,
whereas the priority in scientific
operations is the requirement
to account for things in a universally
intelligible context.
3. Naturalists and ethnologists,
as well as museologists, generally
select things which they already call
objects, according to their potential
as evidence, that is the quality
of information (markers) that they
can provide to reflect the ecosystems
or cultures the traces of which
they wish to preserve. “Musealia
(museum objects) are authentic
movable objects which, as irrefutable
evidence, show the development of
nature and society” (Schreiner 1985).
The wealth of information they
provide has led ethnologists such
as Jean Gabus (1965) or Georges
Henri Rivière (1989) to attribute to
them the name witness-object, which
they retain when they are displayed.
Georges Henri Rivière even used the
expression symbol-object to describe
certain witness objects heavy with
content which might claim to summarise
a whole culture or period.
The result of systematically making
things into objects is that they can
be studied much better than if they
were still in their original context
(ethnographic field, private collection
or gallery), but it can also become
fetishist: a ritual mask, a ceremonial
costume, a prayer tool etc. quickly
change their status when they enter
the museum. We are no longer in
the real world, but in the imaginary
world of the museum. For example,
the visitor is not allowed to sit on
63
a chair in a museum of decorative
arts, which supposes an established
distinction between the functional
chair and the chair-object. Their
function has been removed and they
have been ‘decontextualised’, which
means that from now on they will no
longer serve their original purpose
but have entered a symbolic order
which gives them new meaning, leading
Krzysztof Pomian to call such
objects semiophores (“carriers of
significance”) and to attribute a new
value to them – which is first of all
purely a museal value but which can
become an economic value. They
thus become sacred (consecrated)
evidence of culture.
4. Exhibitions reflect these choices.
For semiologists like Jean Davallon
“Musealia can be considered less
as things (from the point of view of
their physical reality) than as language
beings (they are defined, recognized
as worthy of being safeguarded and
displayed) and as supports of social
practices (they are collected, catalogued,
displayed etc.)” (Davallon,
1992). Objects can thus be used
as signs, just like words in speech,
when they are used in an exhibition.
But objects are not just signs, since
by their presence alone they can be
directly perceived by our senses.
For this reason the term real thing
is often used to indicate a museum
object exhibited because of its power
of “authentic presence”, that is “The
real things of the museum language
are those things which we present as
what they are, not as models or images
or representations of something
else.” (Cameron, 1968). For various
reasons (sentimental, aesthetic, etc.)
we have an intuitive relationship with
that which is displayed. The noun
exhibit refers to a real thing which is
displayed, but also to anything displayable
(a sound, photographic or
film document, a hologram, a reproduction,
a model, an installation or
a conceptual model) (see Exhibition).
5. A certain tension exists between
the real thing and its substitute.
Regarding this we must note that for
some people the semiophore object
is only a carrier of meaning when
it is presented for itself, and not
through a substitute. Wide as it may
seem, this purely reist concept does
not take account of either the origins
of museums in the Renaissance
(see Museum) or the development
and diversity reached by museology
during the 19th
century. Nor does
it allow us to take into account the
work of a number of museums whose
activities are essentially on other
support systems such as the internet
or duplicated media, or more
generally all the museums made
of substitutes such as museums of
casts (gypsotheques), collections of
models, collections of wax reproductions
(ceratheques), or science
centres which display mostly models.
Since these objects were considered
as elements of a language, they can
be used to create lecture exhibitions,
but they are not always adequate to
sustain the entire lecture. We must
therefore envisage other elements
64
of a language of substitution. When
the exhibit replaces a real thing or
authentic object, through its function
or nature, the replacement is
called a substitute. It may be a photograph,
a drawing or a model of
the real thing. The substitute would
thus be said to be in conflict with the
‘authentic’ object, even though it is
not exactly the same as a copy of the
original (such as the casts of a sculpture
or copy of a painting), in so far
as substitutes can be created directly
from an idea or a process and not just
by producing a perfect copy. According
to the form of the original and
the use that should be made of it,
the substitute can be two or threedimensional.
The idea of authenticity,
particularly important in fine
arts museums (masterpieces, copies
and fakes), influences the majority
of the questions attached to the status
and value of museum objects.
We must nonetheless note that there
are museums which have collections
made solely of substitutes, and that,
generally speaking, the policy of
substitutes (copies, plaster casts or
wax, models or digital images) opens
the field of museum operations very
wide and leads us to question all the
present values of the museum from
the point of view of museal ethics.
Moreover, from the wider perspective
mentioned above, any object displayed
in a museum context must be
considered as a substitute for the reality
it represents because as a musealised
thing, the museum object is a
substitute for this thing (Deloche,
2001).
6. In the museological context,
especially in the fields of archaeology
and ethnology, specialists are accustomed
to invest the object with the
meaning they have developed from
their own research. But this raises
several problems. First of all, the
objects change their meaning in their
original environment at the whim of
each generation. Next, each visitor is
free to interpret them according to
his or her own culture. The result is
the relativism summarised by Jacques
Hainard in 1984 in a sentence which
has become famous: “The object
is not the truth of anything. Firstly
polyfunctional, then polysemic, it
takes on meaning only when placed
in context.” (Hainard, 1984)
CORRELATED: ARTEFACT, AUTHENTICITY,
COLLECTION, COPY, EXHIBIT, FETISH-OBJECT, REAL THING,
REPLICA, REPRODUCTION, SPECIMEN, SUBSTITUTE, THING,
TRANSITORY OBJECT, WITNESS-OBJECT, WORK OF ART.
65
PRESERVATION
n – Equivalent French: préservation; Spanish:
preservación; German: Bewahrung, Erhaltung;
Italian: preservazione; Portuguese:
preservaçāo.
To preserve means to protect a thing
or a group of things from different
hazards such as destruction, deterioration,
separation or even theft; this
protection is ensured by gathering
the collection in one place, inventorising
it, sheltering it, making it secure
and repairing it.
In museology, preservation covers
all the operations involved when an
object enters a museum, that is to
say all the operations of acquisition,
entering in the inventory, recording
in the catalogue, placing in storage,
conservation, and if necessary restoration.
The preservation of heritage
generally leads to a policy which
starts with the establishment of a procedure
and criteria for acquisition of
the material and intangible heritage
of humanity and its environment,
and continues with the management
of those things which have become
museum objects, and finally with
their conservation. In this sense the
concept of preservation represents
that which is fundamentally at stake
in museums, because the building up
of collections structures the mission
of museums and their development.
Preservation is one axis of museal
action, the other being transmission
to the public.
1. The acquisition policy is, in most
cases, a fundamental part of the way
any museum operates. Acquisition,
within the museum, brings together
all the means by which a museum
takes possession of the material and
intangible heritage of humanity:
collecting, archaeological digs, gifts
and legacy, exchange, purchase, and
sometimes methods reminiscent of
pillage and abduction (combated by
ICOM and UNESCO – Recommendation
of 1956 and Convention of
1970). The management of collections
and the overseeing of collections comprise
all the operations connected
with the administrative handling of
museum objects, that is to say their
recording in the museum catalogue or
registration in the museum inventory
in order to certify their museal status
– which, in some countries, gives
them a specific legal status, since the
items entered in the inventory, especially
in publicly owned museums,
are inalienable and imprescriptible.
In some countries such as the United
States, museums may exceptionally
deaccession objects by transfer to
P
66
another museal institution, destruction
or sale. Storage and classification
are also part of collection management,
along with the supervision of
all movements of objects within and
outside the museum. Finally, the
objective of conservation is to use all
the means necessary to guarantee
the condition of an object against
any kind of alteration in order to
bequeath it to future generations.
In the broadest sense these actions
include overall security (protection
against theft and vandalism, fire and
floods, earthquakes or riots), general
measures known as preventive conservation,
or “all measures and actions
aimed at avoiding and minimizing
future deterioration or loss. They are
carried out within the context or on
thesurroundingsofanitem,butmore
often a group of items, whatever their
age and condition. These measures
and actions are indirect – they do
not interfere with the materials and
structures of the items. They do not
modify their appearance” (ICOMCC,
2008). Additionally, remedial
conservation is “all actions directly
applied to an item or a group of items
aimed at arresting current damaging
processes or reinforcing their structure.
These actions are only carried
out when the items are in such a
fragile condition or deteriorating at
such a rate that they could be lost in
a relatively short time. These actions
sometimes modify the appearance of
the items” (ICOM-CC, 2008). Restoration
covers “all actions directly
applied to a single and stable item
aimed at facilitating its appreciation,
understanding and use. These
actions are only carried out when the
item has lost part of its significance
or function through past alteration
or deterioration. They are based on
respect for the original material.
Most often such actions modify the
appearance of the item” (ICOM-CC,
2008). To preserve the integrity of
the items as far as possible, restorers
choose interventions which are reversible
and can be easily identified.
2. In practice, the concept of
conservation is often preferred to
that of preservation. For many
museum professionals, conservation,
which addresses both the action
and the intention to protect cultural
property, whether material or
intangible, constitutes a museum’s
core mission. This explains the use
in French of the word conservateurs
(in English curators, in the UK keepers)
which appeared at the time of
the French Revolution. For a long
time (throughout the 19th
century at
least) this word seems to have best
described the function of a museum.
Moreover the current definition of
museum by ICOM (2007) does not
use the term preservation to cover
the concepts of acquisition and
conservation. From this perspective,
the notion of conservation should
probably be envisaged in a much
wider sense, to include questions of
inventories and storage. Nonetheless,
this concept collides with a different
reality, which is that conservation
(for example, in the ICOM Conser-
67
vation Committee) is much more
clearly connected with the work of
conservation and restoration, as described
above, than with the work of
management or overseeing of the
collections. New professional fields
have evolved, in particular collection
archivists and registrars. The notion
of preservation takes account of all
these activities.
3. The concept of preservation,
in addition, tends to objectivise
the inevitable tensions which exist
between each of these functions (not
to mention the tensions between
preservation and communication or
research), which have often been the
target of much criticism: “The idea
of conservation of the heritage takes
us back to the anal drives of all capitalist
societies” (Baudrillard, 1968;
Deloche, 1985, 1989). A number of
acquisition policies, for example,
include deaccession policies at the
same time (Neves, 2005). The question
of the restorer’s choices and,
generally speaking, the choices to
be made with regard to conservation
operations (what to keep and what to
discard?) are, along with deaccession,
some of the most controversial issues
in museum management. Finally,
museums are increasingly acquiring
and preserving intangible heritage,
which presents new problems and
forces them to find conservation
techniques which can be adapted for
these new types of heritage.
CORRELATED: ACQUISITION, DOCUMENT, ITEMS,
MONUMENT, GOODS, PROPERTY, SEMIOPHORE, THINGS,
RELIC (HOLY), WORK; HERITAGE, INTANGIBLE, MATERIAL;
REALITY; COMMUNITY; PREVENTIVE CONSERVATION,
REMEDIAL CONSERVATION, SAFEGUARD; COLLECTION
MANAGEMENT, COLLECTION OVERSIGHT, COLLECTION
MANAGER, CURATOR, CONSERVATOR, INVENTORY,
RESTORER; DEACCESSION, RESTITUTION.
PROFESSION
n. – Equivalent in French: profession; Spanish:
profesión; German: Beruf; Italian: professione;
Portuguese: profissāo.
Profession is defined first of all in a
socially defined setting, and not by
default. Profession does not constitute
a theoretical field: a museologist
can call himself an art historian or a
biologist by profession, but he can
also be considered – and socially
accepted – as a professional museologist.
For a profession to exist, moreover,
it must define itself as such, and
also be recognised as such by others,
which is not always the case in the
museum world. There is not one
profession, but several museal professions
(Dubé, 1994), that is to say
a range of activities attached to the
museum, paid or unpaid, by which
one can identify a person (in particular
for his civil status) and place him
in a social category.
If we refer to the concept of museology
as presented here, most museum
employees are far from having received
the professional training that
their title would imply, and very few
can claim to be museologists simply
because they work in a museum.
There are, however, many positions
which require a specific background.
ICTOP (The ICOM International
68
Committee for the Training of Personnel)
has listed twenty of them
(Ruge, 2008).
1. Many employees, often the
majority of people working in the
institution, follow a career path
which has only a relatively superficial
relationship with the very
principle of the museum – whereas
to the wider public, they personify
museums. This is the case with
security officers or guards, the staff
responsible for the surveillance of
exhibition areas in the museum,
who are the main contacts with the
public, like the receptionists. The
specificity of museum surveillance
(precise measures for security and for
evacuating the public and the collections
etc.) has gradually throughout
the 19th
century imposed specific
recruitment categories, in particular
that of a body which is separate from
the rest of the administrative staff.
At the same time it was the figure of
the curator who appeared as the first
specifically museal profession. For a
long time the curator was in charge
of all tasks directly relating to the
objects in the collection, that is their
preservation, research and communication
(PRC model, Reinwardt
Academie). The curator’s training is
firstly associated with the study of
the collections (art history, natural
sciences, ethnology etc.) even if, for
several years now, it has been backed
up by a more museological training
such as that given by a number of
universities. Many curators who have
specialised in the study of the collections
– which remains uncontested as
their main field of activity - cannot
call themselves either museologists,
or museographers (museum practitioners),
even if in practice some of
them easily combine these different
aspects of museal work. In France,
unlike other European countries, the
body of curators is generally recruited
by competition and benefits from
a specific training school (Institut
national du Patrimoine/the National
Heritage Institute).
2. The term museologist can be
applied to researchers studying the
specific relationship between man
and reality, characterised as the
documentation of the real by direct
sensory perception. Their field of
activity essentially concerns theory
and critical thinking in the museal
field, so they may work elsewhere
than in a museum, for example in
a university or in other research
centres. The term is also applied by
extension to any person working for
a museum and holding the function
of project leader or exhibition programmer.
So museologists differ
from curators, and also from museographers,
who are responsible for the
design and general organisation of
the museum and its security, conservation
and restoration facilities along
with the exhibition galleries, whether
permanent or temporary. Museographers,
with their specific technical
skills, have an expert vision of all the
ways in which a museum operates –
preservation, research and communication
– and by drawing up the
appropriate specifications they can
manage the information connected
69
with the overall work of the museum,
from preventive conservation to the
information disseminated to different
publics. The museographer differs
from the exhibit designer; a term
proposed to indicate the person with
all the skills required to create exhibitions,
whether these are situated in
a museum or in a non-museal setting,
and from the exhibition designer in
that the latter, who uses techniques to
set the scene for the exhibition, may
also find himself skilled at setting up
an exhibition (see Museography). The
professions of exhibit designer and
exhibition designer have long been
related to that of decorator, which
refers to decoration of the spaces.
But the work of interior decoration
in functional areas pertaining to the
normal activities of interior decoration
differs from the tasks that are
required for exhibitions, which are in
the field of exhibit design. In exhibitions,
their work tends more towards
fitting out the space using exhibits as
elements of decoration, rather than
starting from the exhibits to be displayed
and given meaning within
the space. Many exhibit designers
or exhibition designers call themselves
first of all architects of interior
design, which does not mean that any
architect of interior design can claim
the status of exhibit designer or exhibition
designer, or of museographer.
In this context the exhibition and
display curator (a role often played by
the curator, but sometimes by a person
from outside the museum) takes
on its full meaning, since he or she
produces the scientific project for the
exhibition and coordinates the entire
project.
3. Assisted by the development of
the museal field, a number of professions
have gradually emerged and
to become independent, and also to
confirm their importance and their
will to be a part of the museum’s
destinies. This phenomenon can
essentially be observed in the fields
of preservation and communication.
In preservation, it was first of all the
conservator, as a professional with
scientific competences and above
all the techniques required for the
physical treatment of the collection
objects (restoration, preventive and
remedial conservation), who required
highly specialised training (by
types of material and techniques),
competences which the curator does
not have. Similarly the tasks imposed
by the inventory, relating to management
of the reserves, and also to the
moving of items, favoured the relatively
recent creation of the post of
registrar, who is responsible for the
movement of objects, insurance matters,
management of the reserves and
sometimes also the preparation and
mounting of an exhibition (at which
point the registrar becomes the exhibition
curator).
4. Regarding communication, the
staff attached to the educational
department, along with all the staff
who work in public relations, have
benefited from the emergence of
a number of specific professions.
Undoubtedly one of the oldest of
these is that of guide-interpreter,
70
guide-lecturer or lecturer, who
accompanies visitors (most often in
groups) through the exhibition galleries,
giving them information about
the exhibition and the objects on display,
essentially following the principle
of guided visits. This first type of
accompaniment has been joined by
the function of animator, the person
in charge of workshops or other experiences
coming under the museum’s
communication methods, and then
that of cultural projects coordinator
who is the intermediary between the
collections and the public and whose
aim is more to interpret the collections
and to encourage the public to
take interest in them than to systematically
teach the public according to a
pre-established content. Increasingly
the web master plays a fundamental
role in the museum’s communication
and mediation tasks.
5. Other cross-cutting or ancillary
occupations have been added to these
professions. Among these are the
head or project manager (who may be
a scientist, or a museographer) who
is responsible for all the methods for
implementing the museal activities
and who groups around him specialists
in the fields of preservation,
research, and communication in
order to carry out specific projects,
such as a temporary exhibition, a
new gallery, an open reserve, etc.
6. In more general terms it is very
likely that administrators or museum
managers, who already have their own
committee in ICOM, will emphasise
the specific skills of their function by
distinguishing it from other organisations,
for profit or not. The same
is true for many other administrative
tasks such as logistics, security,
information technology, marketing,
and media relations, which are all
growing in importance. Museum
directors (who also have associations,
particularly in the United States)
have profiles that cover one or more
of the above proficiencies. They are
symbols of authority in the museum,
and their profile (manager or curator,
for example) is often presented
as indicative of the development and
action strategy that the museum will
adopt.
CORRELATED: ANIMATOR, COMMUNICATOR,
CONSERVATION, CURATOR, CULTURAL PROJECTS
COORDINATOR, EDUCATOR, EVALUATOR, EXHIBIT
PRACTICE, EXHIBIT STUDIES, EXHIBITION DESIGNER,
GUARD, GUIDE, GUIDE-INTERPRETER, INTERIOR DESIGNER,
LECTURER, MANAGEMENT, MEDIATOR, MUSEOGRAPHY,
MUSEOLOGIST, MUSEOLOGY, MUSEUM PRACTICE,
MUSEUM STUDIES, PROJECT MANAGER, RESEARCHER,
RESTORER, SECURITY OFFICER, STAGE DESIGNER,
TECHNICIAN, VOLUNTEER.
PUBLIC
n., adj. (Latin publicus, populus: people or
population) – Equivalent in French: public,
audience; Spanish: público; German:
Publikum Besucher; Italian: pubblico; Portuguese:
público.
The term has two accepted meanings,
according to whether it is used
as an adjective or a noun.
1. The adjective ‘public’ – as in
‘public museum’ – explains the legal
relationship between the museum
71
and the people of the area in which
it is located. The public museum is
essentially the property of the people;
it is financed and administered by the
people through its representatives
and by delegation, through its management.
This system is most strongly
present in Latin countries: the public
museum is essentially financed by
taxes, and its collections are part
of the logic of public ownership (in
principle they cannot rightfully be
removed or deaccessioned, nor can
their status be changed unless a strict
procedure is followed). The working
rules are generally those of public
services, especially the principle of
continuity (the service is required to
operate continuously and regularly,
with no interruptions other than
those provided for in the regulations),
the principle of mutability (the
service must adapt to changes in the
needs of the general public interest,
and there should be no legal obstacle
to changes to be made to this end),
the principle of equality (to insure
that each citizen is treated equally).
Finally the principle of transparency
(communication of documents about
the service to anyone who requests
them, and the reasons for certain
decisions) signifies that the museal
establishment is open to all and
belongs to all; it is at the service of
society and its development.
In Anglo-American law the prevailing
notion is less that of public
service than that of public trust,
principles which demand that the
trustees have a strict commitment to
the museum, generally organised as a
private enterprise with the status of
a non-profit organisation, and that
the activities of the board of trustees
are aimed at a certain public. This
museum’s main point of reference,
particularly in the United States, is
more an idea of community than that
of public, the term community often
being taken in a very wide sense (see
Society).
This principle of public interest
causes museums worldwide to see
their activities carried out, if not
under the aegis of public authorities,
then at least with reference to
them, and most often to be partly
run by these authorities, which in
turn obliges museums to respect
a number of rules which influence
their administration and a number
of ethical principles. In this context
the question of the private museum
and that of the museum managed as
a commercial enterprise allows the
assumption that the different principles
connected with state ownership
and the nature of public authorities
mentioned above would not be
encountered. It is from this perspective
that the ICOM definition of
museum presupposes that it is a nonprofit
organisation, and that many of
the articles of its code of ethics have
been drafted according to its public
nature.
2.Asanountheword‘public’refers
to the museum users (the museum
public), but also, by extension from
its actual user public, to the whole
of the population addressed by the
72
establishment. The notion of public
is central to almost all of the current
definitions of museum: “institution
… at the service of society and its
development, open to the public”
(ICOM, 2007). It is also a “collection
… the conservation and display
of which are of public interest
and intended for public knowledge,
education and enjoyment” (Law on
the museums of France, 2002), or
again “an institution which owns
and uses material objects, preserves
them and exhibits them to the public
according to regular opening hours”
(American Association of Museums,
Accreditation Program, 1973); the
definition published in 1998 by the
Museums Association (UK) replaced
the adjective ‘public’ with the noun
‘people’.
The very notion of public closely
associates the museum activities with
its users, even those who are intended
tobenefitfromitbutdonotuseitsservices.
By users we mean of course the
visitors – the public at large – about
whom we think first of all, forgetting
that they have not always played the
central role that the museum recognises
today, because there are many
specific publics. Museums have opened
up to everyone only gradually,
being first of all a place for artistic
training and for the territory of the
learned and scholarly. This opening,
which has led museum staff to take
an increasing interest in all its visitors
and also in the population that
does not visit museums, has fostered
the growth of ways of interpreting
the museum to all the users, as we
can see by the new words used over
time: people, public at large, nonpublic,
distant public, disabled or
frail; users, visitors, observers, spectators,
consumers, audience, etc. The
development of the professional field
of exhibition critics, many of whom
present themselves as “public advocates”
or “for the voice of the public”,
is evidence of this current tendency
to reinforce the idea that the public is
at the core of general museum operations.
Essentially since the end of the
1980s we talk of a real “turn towards
the public” in museal action, to show
the growing importance of museum
visits and take account of the needs
and expectations of visitors (which
corresponds to what we also call
“the commercial trend of museums”,
even if the two do not necessarily go
together).
3. By extension, in the models of
community museums and ecomuseums,
the public has been extended
to cover the whole of the population
in the areas in which they are set.
The population is the basis of the
museum and in the case of the ecomuseum,
it becomes the main player
and no longer the target of the establishment
(see Society).
DERIVATIVES: DISABLED PUBLIC, MINORITY PUBLIC,
NON-PUBLIC, PUBLIC AT LARGE, PUBLIC RELATIONS,
PUBLICITY, TARGET PUBLIC.
CORRELATED: AUDIENCE, ASSESSMENTS,
COMMUNITY, CUSTOMERS, ECOMUSEUM, EVALUATION,
EVALUATORS, LOYALTY BUILDING, PEOPLE, POPULATION,
PRIVATE, SOCIETY, SPECTATORS, ENQUIRIES, TOURISTS,
USERS, VISITING, VISITORS.
73
RESEARCH
n. – Equivalent in French: recherche; Spanish:
investigación; German: Forschung; Italian:
ricerca; Portuguese: pesquisa, investigaçāo.
Research consists of exploring predefined
fields with the purpose of
advancing the knowledge of these
and the action it is possible to carry
out in these fields. In the museum,
research consists of the intellectual
activities and work aimed at discovery,
invention, and the advancement
of new knowledge connected with
the museum collections, or the activities
it carries out.
1. Until 2007 ICOM presented
research in the French (and official)
version of the definition of
museum, as the driving force behind
its functioning, the objective of the
museum being to carry out research
on the material evidence of man and
society, which is why the museum
“acquires, conserves, and exhibits”
this evidence. This formal definition
which presented the museum
as a kind of laboratory (open to the
public) no longer represents museal
reality today, since a large part of
the research such as was carried out
in the last third of the 20th
century
has been moved from museums to
laboratories and universities. Now
the museum “acquires, conserves,
researches, communicates and exhibits
the tangible and intangible heritage
of humanity” (ICOM, 2007).
This definition, shorter than the
previous one (and with the term “fait
des recherches” [does research] in
French replaced by “étudier” [study])
nonetheless remains essential to the
general operations of the museum.
Research is one of the three activities
of the PRC model (Preservation
– Research – Communication) proposed
by the Reinwardt Academie
(Mensch, 1992) to define the functioning
of museums; it appears to be
a fundamental element for thinkers
as different as Zbyneˇk Stránský or
Georges Henri Rivière, and many
other museologists from central and
eastern Europe, such as Klaus Schreiner.
At the Musée national des Arts
et traditions populaires (The National
Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions),
and more precisely through
his works on l’Aubrac, Rivière perfectly
illustrated the repercussions
of the scientific research programme
for all the functions of a museum, in
particular its acquisition, publication
and exhibition policies.
2. Aided by market mechanisms
which have favoured temporary
exhibitions to the detriment of per-
R
74
manent ones, part of the fundamental
research has been replaced by a
more applied research, particularly
in the preparation of temporary
exhibitions. Research within the framework
of the museum or attached
to it can be classified into four categories
(Davallon, 1995), according
to whether it is part of the operations
of the museum (its technology)
or produces knowledge about the
museum.
The first type of research, certainly
the most developed, is direct
evidence of traditional museal activity
and is based on the museum’s
collections, relying essentially on
the reference disciplines connected
with the content of the collections
(history of art, history, natural
sciences, etc.). The building of classification
systems, inherent to the
building of a collection and productive
of catalogues, was one of the
foremost research priorities within
the museum, particularly in natural
science museums (this is the essence
of taxonomy), but also in museums
of ethnography, archaeology and of
course fine art.
The second type of research involves
sciences and disciplines which
lie outside the realm of museology
(physics, chemistry, communication
sciences, etc.), pursued in order to
develop tools for museum practice
(considered here as museal techniques):
material and standards for
conservation, study or restoration,
surveys of the public, management
methods, etc.
The aim of the third type of
research, which can be called
museological (for example, museal
ethics), is to stimulate thought
about the mission and operations of
museums – especially through the
work of ICOFOM. The disciplines
involved are essentially philosophy
and history, or museology as defined
by the Brno school.
Finally, the fourth type of research,
which can also be seen as museological
(understood as all critical thought
connected with the museal) addresses
analysis of the institution, in particular
through its communication
and heritage aspects. The sciences
mobilised for building up knowledge
about the museum itself are history,
anthropology, sociology and linguistics,
etc.
DERIVATIVES: MUSEOLOGICAL RESEARCH CENTRE,
RESEARCHER.
CORRELATED: CURATOR, COMMUNICATION,
MUSEOLOGY, MUSEUM STUDIES, PRESERVATION,
SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME OF THE MUSEUM, STUDY.
75
SOCIETY
n. – Equivalent in French: société; Spanish:
sociedad; German: Gesellschaft, Bevölkerung;
Italian: società; Portuguese: sociedade.
In its most general sense, society
is the human group understood
as a more or less coherent whole
in which systems of relationships
and exchange are established. The
society addressed by museums can
be defined as a community of individuals
(in a specific place at a specific
time) organised around common
political, economic, legal and cultural
institutions, of which the museum
is a part and with which it builds its
activities.
1. Since 1974 the museum has been
viewed by ICOM – following the
declaration of Santiago de Chile – as
an institution “in the service of
society and its development”. This
proposal, historically determined by
the birth of the expression “developing
country” and its identification
during the 1970s as a third group of
countries between western and eastern
countries, sees the museum as an
agent for the development of society,
whether this be culture (the use of
the term going so far as to include its
literal meaning at this time of agricultural
development) or tourism
and economy, as is the case today. In
this sense society can be understood
as all the inhabitants of one or more
countries, or even the entire world.
This is the case for UNESCO, the
international promoter most committed
to the maintenance and development
of cultures and the respect
of cultural diversity, as well as to
the development of educational systems
– a category in which museums
willingly take their place.
2. If on first sight society can be
defined as a community structured
by institutions, the concept of community
itself differs from that of
society, since a community is a group
of people living collectively or forming
an association, sharing a number
of things in common (language,
religion, customs) without necessarily
gathering around institutional
structures. More generally speaking,
society and community are generally
differentiated by their assumed size:
the term community is generally
used to define smaller and more
homogeneous groups (the Jewish
community, the gay community, etc.,
in a city or in a country), whereas the
term society is often used in the case
of much larger and necessarily more
S
76
heterogeneous groups of people (the
society of this country, bourgeois
society). More precisely, the term
community, regularly used in AngloAmerican
countries, does not have
a true equivalent in French since it
represents “A collection of constituents
or stakeholders 1) audiences,
2) scholars, 3) other public interpreters,
e.g. Press, interpretative
artists, 4) program providers – arts
groups, etc, 5) repositories, including
libraries, preservation agencies,
museums” (American Association of
Museums, 2002). The term is translated
in French either by collectivité or
population locale or communauté (in
a restricted sense), or also by milieu
professionel.
3. Two types of museums– social
museums and community museums –
have been developed in recent decades
in order to emphasise the specific
connection that these museums wish
to build with their public. These
museums, traditionally ethnographic
museums, present themselves
as establishments which have strong
ties with their public, who is at the
centre of their work. Although the
nature of their respective objectives
is similar, their management style
differs, as does their relation with
the public. The term social museums
includes “museums which share the
same objective: to study the evolution
of humanity in its social and
historical components, and to transmit
the staging posts, the points of
reference, for understanding the
diversity of cultures and societies”
(Vaillant, 1993). These objectives
establish the museum as a truly interdisciplinary
space and can produce
exhibitions addressing subjects as
varied as the BSE crisis, immigration,
ecology etc. The operation of
community museums, which can
be part of the movement of social
museums, is more directly related
to the social, cultural, professional
or geographical group which they
represent and which is meant to sustain
them. Although often professionally
managed, they may also rely on
local initiative alone and the spirit of
giving. The issues they address touch
directly on the functioning and identity
of this community; this is particularly
the case for neighbourhood
museums and ecomuseums.
DERIVATIVES: SOCIAL MUSEUMS, SOCIETY
MUSEUMS.
CORRELATED: COMMUNITY, COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT, COMMUNITY MUSEUM, DEVELOPMENT
PROGRAMME, ECOMUSEUM, IDENTITY, LOCAL,
NEIGHBOURHOOD MUSEUM, PUBLIC.
77
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