Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

I NTRODUCTION
everyone shares a common language (scientifi c 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 benefi t 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 fi rst contributors, under the direction of André Desvallées
(who had worked for many years with Georges Henri Rivière, the fi rst
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 fi eld, but we must point out that most of these
authors – with some notable exceptions, such as the emblematic fi gures
of Patrick Boylan and Peter Davis, read neither French nor Spanish. 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 fi eld 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 fi eld.
On the other hand, the choice of a language has consequences
for the structuring of thought – as illustrated by a comparison of the
defi nition of the museum by ICOM in 1974 and in 2007, the fi rst 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
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